Window on Eurasia: Water Shortage Threatens Uzbek Cotton Crop and Regional Stability

Paul Goble

Baku, May 14 – Uzbekistan’s cotton crop, which generates 20 percent of its international earnings, is at risk this year because of a severe water shortage, thus setting the stage both for instability within that country and for increased tensions between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, from which the water comes.
In an article headlined “The Deficit of Irrigation Water Threatens Uzbekistan with Catastrophic Consequences,” Ferghana.ru notes that Uzbekistan’s reservoirs are nearly empty as the cotton planting season there begins and that Kyrgyzstan’s decision to keep water levels behind hydroelectric dams high is one of the reasons.
The Kyrgyz decision has compounded both the long-term economic and population stresses on the region’s water supply and the short-term impact of an unusually dry winter in Uzbekistan. As a result, Uzbek officials predict that the country will have no more than 7 billion cubic meters of water this year, down from 10.5 billion a year ago.
And the real impact of those flows on the Uzbek cotton industry is reflecting in the fact that the Charvak reservoir, some 80 km northwest of Tashkent, has 2.5 times less water than it did a year ago, with no additions expected this year. Other reservoirs are equally hard hit.
(www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=5694&PHPSESSID=10b0f38a812915e12b28faa68d7a1c13)
Uzbeks “well remember the catastrophic drought of 2000,” Ferghana.ru reports, when “the level of water fell 60 to 80 percent from the average of the last century.” To save the cotton crop that year, Tashkent introduced water rationing and even evacuated people from the hardest hit regions, like Karakalpakia, which is just south of the rapidly disappearing Aral Sea.
The intervening years –except for 2006 --have been better, the news service reports, but the situation now may be even worse than the one in 2000. Indeed, it says, officials from President Islam Karimov on down have been warning of disaster even as they have been reluctant to release the statistics that could show just how bad things are and may become.
Two years ago, Viktor Dukhovniy, an expert of the UN’s World Food Organization, warned that by 2030 “Uzbekistan will not be able to function without additional water supplies” given population pressure and economic development, especially after the glaciers in the Pamirs and Tien-Shan mountains completely meld by 2020.
Last year, in order to try to cope, Karimov prohibited the growing of rice in eight of the 15 oblasts of his country and required farmers in the other seven to get permission, something that saved water but that reduced the production of rice and forced Uzbekistan to ban without any publicity the export of rice and push for more use of wheat.
And speaking to his government in April, Karimov said that Tashkent had been able to ensure that Uzbeks overall had 84 percent of the drinking water they need, a figure that falls to 77 percent in rural areas and one that is especially frightening because it raises the question of what the government can or will do next.
A population that is running out of water and running short of basic food stuffs is unlikely to remain stable, and a government that sees water and thus food just over the border is unlikely to remain pacific, two reminders of just how great an impact water shortages are likely to have in the Central Asian region, even before the Aral Sea disappears two years from now.

Window on Eurasia: Aleksandr Dugin -- a ‘Zhirinovsky for the Intellectuals’

Paul Goble

Istanbul, May 14 – Aleksandr Dugin and his outspoken support for an anti-Western alliance between Orthodox Christianity and Islam and for the establishment of an effective dictatorship in Russia have generated a great deal of attention and concern, but most observers have dismissed him as little more than an intellectual rabble rouser.
Now, an examination of his career shows that he represents a far more serious danger because he has provided a superficially attractive ideological statement to cover a truly dangerous program that could under certain conditions lead to the rise of a radical national socialist Russia.
In an article in the current issue of “Russkiy zhurnal,” Mikhail Duinov argues that Dugin’s rise has less to do with his own thought and efforts than with his ability to reflect and articulate some of the deepest feelings of contemporary Russian nationalist thought as they have evolved since the late 1980s (http://www.russ.ru/stat_i/glavnyj_kochevnik_rossii).
Dugin, who has enjoyed support from within the government in the past, has recently become more critical of the regime, leading some to speculate that the Eurasianist leader is uncomfortable with being a regime loyalist and may be planning to help form a new nationalist opposition.
Unfortunately, Duinov indicates, “the problem is deeper” than Dugin’s personality: His recent moves are part of a broader “disappointment within the contemporary political elite” that Vladimir Putin did not “become a dictator” but rather played at democracy and handed over the Kremlin to Dmitry Medvedev whose policies will leave Russia “without a future.”
Because that feeling is widespread, Duinov says, Dugin’s shift in recent months makes it imperative to examine his career and the strange mix of theosophical, geopolitical, mystical, and paranoid ideas he has offered because they undoubtedly reflect the views of other groups who may soon challenge the Kremlin for power.
More than anyone else, Dugin has tried to weave together in a superficially plausible way the enormous diversity of ideas that have split “the national-conservative” strain of Russian thought since the waning days of the Soviet Union and thus to create a platform that will bring him and others like him to supreme power.
Like some of the most thorough-going of these people, Dugin in the late 1980s joined the Pamyat organization and rapidly rose into its leadership ranks. He was later excluded, either because he was too ambitious -- according to people who knew him at the time -- or because he spoke out against that group’s notorious anti-Semitism -- his explanation now.
Dugin later employed his journalistic skills to introduce to Russian audiences the works of Guenon, Karl Schmidt, and “many other [other] ultra-right” figures, including some he extracted from the archives of the Third Reich’s notorious German Society for the Study of Ancient German History and the Heritage of Ancestors.
Then in a series of books, including “Paths of the Absolute,” “Conspiracy Theory,” “The Hyperborean Theory,” and “The Conservative Revolution,” Dugin succeeded in finding a way forward for the old right of the late Soviet period by arguing that all politics is a combination of conspiracies and geography.
In 1993, he took a major step forward in his career when he cofounded with political activist Eduard Limonov the National Bolshevik Party (NBR). “Unlike previous organizations which were built on models close to the CPSU, Dugin and Limonov took as their model the German NSDAP” – with much of its ideological baggage as well.
That party failed to get much support but it did attract attention and support from the extreme right in Europe, something that prompted Dugin to leave the party and seek greater “respectability” as a commentator, counting on people to forget his immediate past links to Limonov.
So successful has he been in rebranding himself as a completely respectable figure that he is frequently cited by major Western news agencies as an authority on Russian political life and even appears as a regular guest on Western-financed radio to discuss the latest developments in the Kremlin.
After the 2000 election, Dugin clearly thought he had found in Putin a leader who would share his views, particularly with regard to opposing the United States and organizing a Eurasian alliance of states, in particular Iran, capable of blocking American geopolitical moves in the Middle East and elsewhere.
But although Putin accepted many of Dugin’s arguments, he and his government were never prepared to sign on to all of them, thus leaving Dugin outside the charmed circle and rendering him, according to Duinov, “an intellectual Zhirinovsky,” an often outrageous court jester rather than a trusted insider on foreign policy.
Disappointed in Putin and with no great expectations for Medvedev, Dugin may now try to become the intellectual leader of the opposition, pushing “the ideology of a conservative revolution” whose national socialist ideas and seeking to unite a broad group of otherwise unconnected groups from the far left to the far right.
The Eurasian leader is clearly open to such alliances at least for tactical purposes, but at present, Duinov says, neither the classical conservatives, nor the national socialists, nor the “Orthodox reactionaries” find Dugin acceptable as a partner. But he appears to be counting on “a new wave of nationalists” consisting of those who have fled one or another camp.
Such political migrants, Duinov says, have demonstrated their lack of principles and their lust for power. Consequently, this new force could line up behind Dugin, who many believe is marked by similar characteristics, simply because he articulates what appear to them to be big ideas capable of returning Russia’s greatness.
Duinov is clearly skeptical that this could happen, but he suggests that Dugin could assemble some of the various ideological strands he has followed in the past and thus construct a program that could under certain circumstances allow him to play a key role in a direct challenge to the current system and power a drive for the kind of dictatorship he favors.
Should that happen, then Dugin could possibly serve as the leader of the left wing of a rightist movement, a role resembling the one Col. Rohm played in the rise of the Nazis in Germany until Hitler, having achieved office, purged Rohm and his left-wing followers in what has come to be known as “the night of the long knives.”

Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Mothers Organize to Combat Police Illegality

Paul Goble

Baku, May 14 – At a time when many segments of the Russian population are being less and less active, mothers concerned about the fate of their children are becoming more so, a development certain to have a growing impact on the future of Russian politics and Russian society more generally.
First, there were the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers who struggled to force the Russian military to live according to the law in the way it treated their children in uniform. Then, there were the mothers of NORD-OST and Beslan who have demanded that the authorities provide more and more reliable information about those tragedies than Moscow has been willing to do.
Now, according to an article in Monday’s “Novyye izvestiya,” Russian mothers in various parts of their country whose children have suffered at the hands of the militia, are spontaneously uniting to combat such malfeasance and to demand that the Russian government force the militia to act within the law (www.newizv.ru/news/2008-05-12/89711/).
The reason Russia’s mothers are doing so, the paper said, is that Russia’s militia officers have long been accustomed to ignore any complaints, and “parents who attempt on their own to show the innocence of their children are almost always condemned to defeat.” Consequently, it continued, “they have no other choice left but to form ranks.”
After recounting three egregious cases in which the Russian militia falsely accused a young man in Ulyanovsk of murder, came up with a willing confessor to protect the person who committed the crime from being brough to justice, and convicted a young woman of a murder she did not commit, “Novyye Izvestiya” recounted the history of this movement.
The story begins in Krasnodar in 2000 when the son of Tatyana Rudakova, on his return from Chechnya, “was unjustly charged with theft, arrested, and beaten by militia personnel.” Rudakova was able to secure his release, but in the course of her efforts, she saw so many other cases of injustice that she decided to form a mothers’ group to help them as well.
She told the paper that in her view, “the government cannot change the situation that exists in the country without social control,” and consequently, her group seeks to identify cases of the violation of the rights of those arrested, charged or convicted, and to shine the bright light of “glasnost’” on them.
In the last eight years, she said, her organization has identified “hundreds of cases of illegal arrests, beatings, tortures, and threats,” prompting the group to picket one corrective labor colony in 2004 in addition to its normal work of filing petitions, meeting with officials and talking to journalists.
And in 2006, the group achieved what Rudakova described as a breakthrough: it succeeded in bringing militia officers to trial for their crimes on the basis of testimony collected by the human rights activists themselves, a success that may have been behind her own elevation to the Social Council on Human Rights in the Krasnodar governor’s office.
At least sometimes, these groups are able to enlist the support of deputies in local government offices. Their signatures on the appeals of the groups are important because the militia almost always responds to queries from elected officials even if it still feels relatively free to ignore citizens’ complaints.
Such efforts seldom get much attention, but they may ultimately prove to be more important than other, more high-profile activities. All Russian citizens can immediately identify with the problems that these groups are fighting, and consequently, they could prove to be among the first true flowers of civil society in a country with too little of that.

Window on Eurasia: FSB Seeks Rehabilitation of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Paul Goble

Istanbul, May 13 – The Federal Security Service (FSB) is working with Russian historians trained in Soviet times to rehabilitate the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, not only by selectively releasing hitherto classified documents but also by directly appealing to the Duma to overturn the denunciation of that pact by the Soviet Congress of Peoples’ Deputies in 1989.
On April 22, the FSB hosted a roundtable on “Problems of the Publication of Sources about the Great Fatherland War. Criticism of Attempts at the Falsification of History.” Immediately after the meeting, the FSB put out an anodyne press release about the session (www.fsb.ru/fsb/press/message/single.htm%21id%3D10434666%40fsbMessage.html), but now more details about what took place are coming to light.
Colonel Sergei Ignatenko, the head of the FSB’s Center for Public Affairs, told the meeting, which included archivists, historians and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, that the FSB wants to release any document it has “if this does not involve a state secret” (www.newsarmenia.net/news12441.htm).
The reason for that, he said, is the increasing tendency by Russian and foreign historians, novelists, and filmmakers to “falsify” the history of the second world war and the Soviet Union’s role in it. “That which we see on movie screens today,” he continued, “is to a great extent falsification in a pure form.”
“With rare exceptions,” there are no serious historical investigations of this subject. One reason for that is the efforts of “our Western opponents” who “distribute money” in order to denigrate Russia, its people and its history. But yet another is the impact of the market economy on domestic filmmakers and writers.
Ignatenko said that when he asked Russian filmmakers why they were distorting the history of the war, he said that they responded by saying that they were doing so “in order to increase ratings.” They do not think, he said, how harmful this is, but only “about ratings and high pay.”
“We beyond any doubt must be responsible for what we bring to the masses,” the FSB colonel said.
Another speaker, Vasiliy Khristoforov, the chief of the registration administration and archives of the FSB, said that many have written that archives, after having been opened in the early 1990s, were now being closed, but “this is not so and any investigator has the opportunity to work in Russian archives.”
But it was a third speaker at the meeting who provided the clearest indication of why the session occurred and what both Soviet-trained historians and the Russian security service hope to achieve in this area.
Oleg Rzheshevskiy, a senior scholar at the Academy of Sciences Institute of General History and the president of the Russian Association of Historians of the Second World War, called for the Russian parliament to overturn the 1989 condemnation of the so-called “secret protocol” of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
“When this protocol was condemned,” he said, “did anyone think about the fact that this agreement was concluded in the interests of security? Because no one raised the question about the circumstances in which it was concluded,” circumstances which gave the USSR “no other way out.”
Consequently, he continued, “if the parliament of Russia will reverse this decision,” that step alone will permit a more effective struggle with the falsifiers of history.” Because then it will be seen that Stalin’s decision in this case was “perhaps the only possible decision” that a responsible leader could have taken.
(In an aside, Rzheshevskiy said that he “does not have official data, however it is precisely known that in Chechnya alone at the time [of the second world war] there were 18,000 armed fighters who struggled against the Red Army,” actions that would have led to “a Civil War” if they had not been deported as Stalin later did.)
Rzheshevskiy concluded his remarks to the FSB meeting by acknowledging that “our history is very complicated but at the same time we must always remember that the USSR defeated fascism,” a contribution that he suggested puts everything else that happened in those times in the proper perspective.
Now, in an essay posted on the Grani.ru portal, Moscow historian and commentator Irina Pavlova has put this meeting and Rzheshevskiy’s remarks in context. She argues that it constituted the long-awaited “revenge” of Soviet-era historians on those who spoke the truth about Stalin in the late 1980s and early 1990s (grani.ru/opinion/m.136132.html).
And tragically, in the current political climate, there is every reason for them to think that “victory will be theirs.” These historians “preserve all the posts in Russian historical science and they also control the preparation of new cadres” in history. Consequently, they are likely to cast their shadow far into the future.
These historians have as their credo the programmatic document adopted at the time of a 1997 meeting of the association of historians that Rzheshevskiy heads. They argued then that “history is a political science” and that in writing it, historians must “always think about the interests of their state and be concerned about the healthy though of the [rising] generations.”
In her current article, Pavlova cites what she said at the time about that attitude: “The processes which are taking place in post-Soviet historical scholarship are connected with the general political processes in the country,” processes which are defeating efforts to tell the truth about the past (narod.ru/texts/history/suvorov/pravda/pavlova.htm).
And what is especially unfortunate, she wrote at that time, is that Western historians are helping these survivals of the Soviet past. “Western historians not only formally continue to maintain ties with pro-communists historians but even support them conceptually,” leaving Russian historians “of the democratic direction” out in the cold.
Some of them for reasons of career or otherwise are thus forced to make their peace with their earlier opponents, Pavlova writes today. One example of that is to be found in the evolution of perhaps the greatest Russian specialist on the history of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact itself, Tatyana Bushuyeva.
In the November 1994 issue of “Noviy mir,” Bushuyeva produced the first honest account in the Russian media of the pact and how it opened the way for World War II. Indeed, Pavlova writes, that article was for historians what the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1962 was for the Russian intelligentsia more generally.
But now, Bushuyeva not only appeared at this FSB meeting but said that “in the 1990s there appeared attempts at the falsification of history, including by means of the invention of facts, the fabrication of documents, and so on.” For herself, Pavlova said, “this sounded like the [notorious] repentance of Dmitry Dudko.”
Nonetheless, the Grani.ru writer ended on a hopeful note. “The current powers that be,” she said, can give directions and the historians who serve them can write about the Second World War however they like. They can lie as much as they want, praising Stalin and his policies to the skies, and slandering again as much as possible those” who don’t agree.
“But the truth about the war, which at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s began to emerge out from under the rubble, can’t be pushed back. It lives. And the greater the effort to impose the pro-Stalinist conception on society, the more people will be drawn [not to it but] to the truth.”

Window on Eurasia: North Caucasians Fear for Their Lives in Stavropol

Paul Goble

Istanbul, May 13 –A rising tide of skinhead violence against Chechen and Ingush youths enrolled in higher educational institutions in Stavropol kray, one that recently resulted in the knifing death of a Chechen student, has sparked fears among the parents of these students that their children may be killed as well, according to the Memorial Human Rights Organization.
That is all the more so, the parents say, because it appears that the police in Stavropol are unwilling to take any real steps either to bring those responsible for these attacks to justice or otherwise protect the Chechen, Ingush and other North Caucasus students now in that Russian region (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1214736.html).
And if this situation intensifies, it is entirely possible that the North Caucasus students may respond in kind, triggering even more violence, or simply withdraw from the Stavropol educational institutions, thus postponing even further into the future any chance that the North Caucasus region will be able to develop in ways that might promote stability there.
The current upsurge in concern began on April 20th when an Ingush and a Chechen student at the North Caucasus State Technical University in Stavropol were attacked by a group of persons unknown. Both ended up in the hospital with serious wounds, where one of them, Ali Khamutayev, died.
His mother told Memorial representatives what had happened. Her son was going home with his girlfriend and Islam Khamkoyev, an Ingush, when they were accosted by a group of up to 10 young people, whose heads were shaved and who were dressed in leather jackets, the typical gear of xenophobic Russian nationalist skinheads.
They asked Ali for a cigarette, and when he said he didn’t smoke, they attacked him and Khamkoyev with knives. Islam lost consciousness. And the attackers then fled. The girl who had been with them called for help, but by the time assistance came, the attackers were long gone. And when the two men were taken to the hospital, Khamutayev died “from loss of blood.”
Khamkoyev survived, but the chief doctor of the hospital “asked his relatives to take Islam away from the hospital since [the doctor] could not guarantee his security,” Memorial reported. And now, Islam is recuperating not in Stavropol where he had been a student but in a hospital in Ingushetiya.
The Stavropol militia launched a criminal case for the attack which they said was the work of “hooligans” and in no way connected with the ethnicity of the attackers and the attacked. They arrested but then released ten men, one of whom the girl at the scene recognized as having taken part. But the militia said he was at the other end of town.
Now, not surprisingly, she fears for her life, and according to Memorial, “the representatives of the law enforcement agencies [in Stavropol] apparently are not able to guarantee her security.” Indeed, the same night that this attack took place, skinheads in Stavropol attacked an ethnic Azerbaijani there.
Chechnya’s human rights ombudsman Nurdi Nukhadzhiyev has appealed to the procurator general and minister of internal affairs of the Russian Federation to intervene, arguing that what had occurred was the product of the failure of law enforcement agencies to punish those responsible or even their complicity with the attackers.
The fascist-like youth groups” in Stavropol, Nukhadzhiyev said, are animated by “the absurd idea” that they will be able to “liberate the Caucasus, of which beyond doubt Stavropol is a part, from [its indigenous population]. And consequently, he continued, Moscow must intervene to stop it.
For its part, Memorial documented both skinhead attacks there over the last year, some of which have resulted in fatalities, and the unwillingness of the Stavropol authorities to recognize them as ethnic crimes or take adequate measures to protect members of minority groups bring those responsible for attacks against them to justice."

Window on Eurasia: Military Hardware in Red Square Parade for Sale, Not for Russian Army

Paul Goble

Ankara, May 13 – For the first time since 1990, military equipment dominated the Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square this year, a development many in both Russia and the West suggested was evidence of Moscow’s growing self-confidence about its role in the world and possibly even an effort to intimidate others.
But Anatoly Tsyganok, a regular Moscow commentator on security questions, has now called attention to one aspect of this event most have passed over in silence: The equipment in the parade, he said, was in almost every case intended not for the Russian military itself but rather for sale to foreign governments (www.gzt.ru/politics/2008/05/12/060008.html).
Yesterday’s “Gazeta” noted that there was “an unprecedented quantity of soldiers and military technology” on Red Square during the parade: “more than 100 pieces of equipment, more than 8,000 soldiers and 33 military planes and helicopters,” a display of enormous power even though much of the equipment is out of date.
But the display does not mean what many thought it did, Tsyganok told the paper. Little of this technology is intended for the Russian military – its units have only a few examples of the kind of weapons that passed through the square. Instead, “the greater part is to be exported to India, China and the countries of Africa.”
To give but one example, Tsyganok continued, Moscow has sold India approximately 500 T-90 tanks, but there were only 90 added to the Russian military service. And “unfortunately, our armaments now,” he continued, are like those the Americans had before they went into Iraq: “ready for parades but in no way suitable for conducting a partisan war.”
Given the Russian government’s penchant for selling military equipment rather than supplying its own military first, the Moscow analyst said, it will take “not less than 100 years” for the Russian army to “renew” its arsenal, something that will leave it increasingly behind not only its traditional competitors but also behind those Moscow is selling military equipment to.
And because the equipment shown and, in the view of Tsyganok being offered for sale, is conventional, the Red Square military parade had the effect of reinforcing the view that Moscow is relying ever more heavily on nuclear weapons for its national defense, something that limits the Russian governments options under certain circumstances and thus contributes to insecurity.
If most journalists and members of the public did not notice this, the expert community and some of Moscow’s leading opposition politicians did, “Gazeta” reported. Dmitry Orlov, the general director of the Agency of Political and Economic Communications, pointed out that the parade did send a message about Russia but certainly not the one intended.
On the one hand, military experts could easily see that what Moscow was putting on display was anything but cutting edge. And on the other, even with this military component, the Victory Parade did not manage to become “the leading world news story” that day, something that reduced any broader meaning.
And Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), was even more dismissive. “All the technology you see,” he told journalists, “is the last gift of Soviet power to present-day Russia. “It must be renewed and made more contemporary,” not simply sold off to others.

Window on Eurasia: Russian Officials Mistreating Survivors of 1957 Soviet Nuclear Accident

Paul Goble

Ankara, May 12 – Russian officials are mistreating the survivors of the 1957 nuclear accident in the Urals, refusing to pay them the pension supplements they are legally entitled to, apparently pocketing the money, and using delaying tactics in court in the hopes that they can outlast the dwindling number of such veterans.
Because this accident took place so long ago and has remained almost entirely out of the public eye and because the number of survivors is now so small, the victims of the Mayak catastrophe have generally suffered in silence. But now some of them are seeking to exploit Internet media portals to attract attention to their plight. .
An example of this new phenomenon, one that reflects the increasing desperation of the survivors, is a letter sent by one of their number, Galina Pashnina, to the Islamnews.ru website. In it, she paints a picture of official indifference, malfeasance and chicanery that stands out even under Russian conditions (www.islamnews.ru/news-11451.html).
“We, who were evacuated from various villages as a result of the accident at Mayak,” her letter begins, “ask you to help us solve our problems. Since 2000 and even earlier, in connection with inflation, the monthly benefits we are supposed to be receiving have been indexed” by law, but officials have not given us the money we are supposed to receive.
According to the declarations of the officials responsible for this, Pashnina continued, they have distributed the money in a completely correct manner and consequently owe us nothing, but “where our money has gone, we can only guess.” The victims of the long-ago disaster “have not received it.”
As a result, Pashnina said, she had gone to court to try to force them to pay what they have been supposed to. She hired a lawyer, but the latter did not show up at the hearing, and consequently, the local court issued the following decision, one that would have pleased Gogol’s heroes:
“According to the provision of the Federal law about the federal budget, reliable financial conditions are created for the realization of the norms, defined in other federal laws, published before its adoption and specifying he financial responsibilities of the state; that is, indicating the means and materials guarantees and the necessity of corresponding expenditures.”
But, “at the same time,” the court continued, “to the extent that the federal budget must be based on the principles of balance, reliability and reality, the federal legislator is within its rights, after having preserved the extent of the guaranteed compensation to stop the action of financial norms which guarantee the realization of the rights and freedoms of citizens.”
“Why such [obfuscation and] injustice?” Pashnina asked. And then she pointed to the logic of legal delay, the kind that animated those in the Chancery Courts described by Dickens in “Great Expectations” and very much in evidence in a small district far from Moscow, the attentions of human rights activists, and the focus of the media.
Apparently because those who control the money and probably are pocketing it, Pashnina suggested, are counting on those who have filed suit to die before they can collect. Six of the 185 veterans in her town have died in the last three months, many are elderly, and more will certainly die before the court reverses itself.
Moreover, the veterans who are not receiving the money they have a right to cannot possibly find work and cannot even use the local lake to catch fish that might supplement their all too meager diets. On the one hand, and despite Russian laws against age discrimination, no one locally will hire any of the 80 percent of the victims who are over 55.
And on the other, a wealthy “new Russian” has bought the land around the lake near the village and prohibited the local people from catching fish. Once the weather warms up, she suggested, local residents are sure they will be banned from swimming. And other new companies are cutting down the woods that the villagers have used for firewood.
Consequently, the future for the village and especially for the surviving veterans of a nuclear accident the Soviets did so much to try to hide and to whose survivors the Russian government committed itself to help have been left to die, at a time when as the Western media likes to say Moscow is flooded with money from the sale of oil.
“In general, who are we? And who needs us? Will the government ever think about its citizens?” It is clear that Pashnina has doubts that it will do so before she and the others who continue to suffer from the actions of officials has grave doubts that this will happen before she and they die off.