Paul Goble
Vienna, March 15 – United Russia’s fraction in the Russian Federation is preparing to copy a Moscow city decision to ban any references in the media to the ethnicity, race, or religion of those who are suspected of committing a crime or convicted of doing so, a measure that will do both less and more than its authors suggest.
On the one hand, as the experience of the media in other countries has shown, the Russian media will retain the ability to communicate such characteristics of people in these groups either by stressing the names – many of which are ethnically specific -- of those involved or providing pictures of them and their environment.
On the other hand -- and much more ominously -- such legislation, however well-intentioned some of its backers may be, creates both the legal and institutional framework for vastly more far-reaching official censorship of stories on television, radio, the print media and the Internet. At the least, it sends a chilling message to everyone involved.
Last week, the Moscow city legislature passed a measure that would ban media references to the ethnicity, race or religion of such people, and now Boris Gryzlov, the leader of the pro-Kremlin United Russia in the Duma has called for including similar bans at the country-wide level (http://www.narodru.ru/article7712.html).
Such a step is necessary, Gryzlov said this week, because “in the near term prospect we must recognize that our nationality is ‘Rossiyane’.” Given his position and the discipline of his party, it appears nearly certain that such a measure will pass and is likely to receive the imprimatur of President Vladimir Putin.
Specifically, the language to be included the national media law on this point is to read: any “distribution in the mass media and also in computer networks of references to the national or religious membership or about the religion of those who suffer, those who commit crimes, those suspected of and accused of committing crimes” is prohibited.
Because media reports about the alleged involvement in criminal activity Muslims, “persons of Caucasus nationality,” or other minorities have often tended to exacerbate the situation, exacerbating interethnic and interfaith tensions, many will see this proposed ban as a good thing.
But as the writer of the “Novaya politika” article featured on the Narodru.ru site put it, the situation in this case is much as former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin put it in another connection: Russians may indeed “want something better, but things turn out as usual.
Not only is such a ban certain to be ineffective and create a dangerous precedent likely to be extended to other groups, but it highlights some fundamental contradictions on Russian policy toward non-Russian groups and threatens the progress that ethnic minorities made in some areas because of preferences afforded them in the past.
Indeed, the contradiction of this policy and other Moscow policies was all too obvious this week. As the APN.ru site reported yesterday, Moscow is now planning to allow ethnic Chechens convicted of crimes anywhere in the Russian Federation to serve their sentences in Chechnya itself. (http://www.apn.ru/print11642.htm).
That not only creates a precedent that other non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation may cite but also may lead the Chechen government to demand even more concessions. But however that might be, such a move inherently ethnicizes Russian life – precisely the opposite of what Gryzlov and United Russia say they seek.
And such a ban will do little or nothing to stem the flow of attacks on members of religious and ethnic minorities. As the SOVA Center’s Galina Kozhevnikova told a St. Petersburg conference on Monday, over the last year, 5.18 percent of all references to Muslims in the press have been negative (http://www.islam.ru, March 13).
If United Russia gets its way – and it almost certainly will – this latest limitation on media freedom in the Russian Federation almost certainly will generation even more xenophobic and anti-minority attitudes as readers again as in Soviet times read between the lines to learn exactly what is going on.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Russians Urged to Revive Novgorod Traditions
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 14 – Medieval Novgorod, a city that was democratic, strong and closely linked to the West, provides a model for Russia’s development, but tragically many of those in Moscow who today call themselves Russian nationalists echo the baseless views of those in the West who say that Russians are incapable of democracy.
In an essay posted online yesterday, Mikhail Pozharskiy, a Russian nationalist himself who has drawn fire from statist and authoritarian nationalists, argues that most Russian nationalists are either ignorant of or have chosen to ignore the precedents Novgorod’s history provides (http://www.apn.ru/publications/print11636.htm).
Nearly a millenium ago when the rulers of Moscow were growing increasingly authoritarian even as they bowed down to the Mongol horde, the city of Novgorod the Great not only was governed by the pro-democratic “veche” but also was linked to states in Western Europe by trade and capable of successfully attacking the Mongols.
Precisely because of these qualities and because they are at odds with those which Moscow represents, Novgorod’s historic role has been played down by the tsarist authorities, by the Soviet regime, and by the post-Soviet Russian government, Pozharskiy suggests.
Soviet-era textbooks generally neglected these traditions because of the danger they posed to the highly centralized and anti-Western USSR, choosing instead to play up the story of Aleksandr Nevskiy and his fights – on behalf not only of his principality but also the Mongols – against the Teutonic knights.
Unfortunately, Pozharskiy continues, that approach has continued since 1991 and for many of the same reasons. And intentionally or not, it has reinforced the common view of Russophobes and statist nationalists that Russians as a nation are incapable of developing a democratic state.
“One well-known European politician said that one must not judge Russia too strictly because there was never a democratic tradition in that country … and Russians are incapable of administering themselves,” Pozharskiy continues. Such things when said by a foreigner are almost universally acknowledged as a form of Russophobia.
But unfortunately, he notes, “many who call themselves ‘Russian nationalists’ say absolutely the same thing. Apparently in their view as well, democracy is alien to the Russian people.” And as a result, they support the notion that Russia must be controlled by a brutal dictator “or at the very least by a cheap parody of a dictator – V.V. Putin.”
To prove both foreign and domestic doubters of Russia’s democratic possibilities, Pozharskiy says, he and some of his colleagues are seeking to promote the ideas of Novgorod to a broader audience, arguing that ethnic Russians need to escape from the Russian Federation in its current form lest they commit demographic suicide.
Not surprisingly, such views are anathema not only to the Moscow Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church but also to many Russian nationalists, who have not been shy in denouncing Pozharskiy and others as dangerous marginals, committed to the dissolution of the Russian state (For a sample of this criticism, see http://www.apn.ru/publications/print11489.htm).
And indeed, many of Pozharskiy’s ideas and those of the Russian national democrats with whom he is associated are both extremist and undemocratic in their implications. But his argument that Russians are not inherently undemocratic is important and may be finding support in some unexpected ways and places.
Last week, after an Ingush migrant killed a Russian youth in a Karelian village, local residents met and declared as a group that they “reserved for themselves the right” to have their district detached from Karelia and unified with the Leningrad oblast if the Karelian authorities did not act (http://www.pravaya.ru/dailynews/11471?print=1).
This kind of proto-democracy, of course, may lead to various kinds of abuses of human rights, but certainly no greater abuses than those visited upon the population of the Russian Federation by its current government. And such popular actions almost certainly are the soil out of which some kind of Russian democracy could again emerge.
Vienna, March 14 – Medieval Novgorod, a city that was democratic, strong and closely linked to the West, provides a model for Russia’s development, but tragically many of those in Moscow who today call themselves Russian nationalists echo the baseless views of those in the West who say that Russians are incapable of democracy.
In an essay posted online yesterday, Mikhail Pozharskiy, a Russian nationalist himself who has drawn fire from statist and authoritarian nationalists, argues that most Russian nationalists are either ignorant of or have chosen to ignore the precedents Novgorod’s history provides (http://www.apn.ru/publications/print11636.htm).
Nearly a millenium ago when the rulers of Moscow were growing increasingly authoritarian even as they bowed down to the Mongol horde, the city of Novgorod the Great not only was governed by the pro-democratic “veche” but also was linked to states in Western Europe by trade and capable of successfully attacking the Mongols.
Precisely because of these qualities and because they are at odds with those which Moscow represents, Novgorod’s historic role has been played down by the tsarist authorities, by the Soviet regime, and by the post-Soviet Russian government, Pozharskiy suggests.
Soviet-era textbooks generally neglected these traditions because of the danger they posed to the highly centralized and anti-Western USSR, choosing instead to play up the story of Aleksandr Nevskiy and his fights – on behalf not only of his principality but also the Mongols – against the Teutonic knights.
Unfortunately, Pozharskiy continues, that approach has continued since 1991 and for many of the same reasons. And intentionally or not, it has reinforced the common view of Russophobes and statist nationalists that Russians as a nation are incapable of developing a democratic state.
“One well-known European politician said that one must not judge Russia too strictly because there was never a democratic tradition in that country … and Russians are incapable of administering themselves,” Pozharskiy continues. Such things when said by a foreigner are almost universally acknowledged as a form of Russophobia.
But unfortunately, he notes, “many who call themselves ‘Russian nationalists’ say absolutely the same thing. Apparently in their view as well, democracy is alien to the Russian people.” And as a result, they support the notion that Russia must be controlled by a brutal dictator “or at the very least by a cheap parody of a dictator – V.V. Putin.”
To prove both foreign and domestic doubters of Russia’s democratic possibilities, Pozharskiy says, he and some of his colleagues are seeking to promote the ideas of Novgorod to a broader audience, arguing that ethnic Russians need to escape from the Russian Federation in its current form lest they commit demographic suicide.
Not surprisingly, such views are anathema not only to the Moscow Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church but also to many Russian nationalists, who have not been shy in denouncing Pozharskiy and others as dangerous marginals, committed to the dissolution of the Russian state (For a sample of this criticism, see http://www.apn.ru/publications/print11489.htm).
And indeed, many of Pozharskiy’s ideas and those of the Russian national democrats with whom he is associated are both extremist and undemocratic in their implications. But his argument that Russians are not inherently undemocratic is important and may be finding support in some unexpected ways and places.
Last week, after an Ingush migrant killed a Russian youth in a Karelian village, local residents met and declared as a group that they “reserved for themselves the right” to have their district detached from Karelia and unified with the Leningrad oblast if the Karelian authorities did not act (http://www.pravaya.ru/dailynews/11471?print=1).
This kind of proto-democracy, of course, may lead to various kinds of abuses of human rights, but certainly no greater abuses than those visited upon the population of the Russian Federation by its current government. And such popular actions almost certainly are the soil out of which some kind of Russian democracy could again emerge.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
