Paul Goble
Vienna, April 11 – The Tajiks of Moscow have established special Sunday schools and summer camps to help younger members of that community learn more about their own nationality and adapt better to other ethnic communities and officials in the Russian capital.
T.S. Kalandarov, a doctoral student at the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, has been studying this effort, and in articles posted on the Fergana.ru and Peoples of Russia websites, he provides a remarkable glimpse of what the Tajiks in Moscow are doing (http://www.narodru.ru/article8738.html).
The number of Tajiks in Moscow is a matter of dispute. The 2002 Russian Federation census listed 35,385, but their actual number in the Russian capital, both legal and illegal, is perhaps several times that, especially if residents of Moscow oblast as well as Moscow city are included.
If the exact size of that community is uncertain, Kalandarov notes, its main organization is anything but. Known as the Tajik Diaspora Organization Nur, it was officially registered with the authorities in 1999 and has been “actively involved” in training “those arriving from Tajikistan and the children of [earlier] migrants” ever since.
Nur has set up Sunday school programs for children aged 8 to 16 and for young people aged 17 to 25. These groups regularly attract up to 100 young Tajiks each week, the Moscow ethnographer said, with those attending learning not only about their own culture but about the sometimes tense culture of inter-ethnic relations in Moscow.
The teachers are mostly Tajiks studying at Moscow’s higher educational institutions, and they give the lessons in Russian. That is because many young Tajiks in Moscow do not know any other language and because some Tajiks from the Pamir region do not speak standard Tajik.
One of the biggest challenges for young Tajiks in Moscow, Kalandarov reports, is their lack of ethnic Russian friends. Many of the Tajiks have been unable to find “a common language” with Russians even if they both speak the language of the dominant nationality.
The Sunday schools thus provide an important support mechanism for young Tajiks, giving them a chance to make friends and keep in touch with others from their homeland even as the instructors seek to promote their adaptation to the larger Russian society.
Because of the nature of these classes – similar to the weekend schools common in other immigrant societies -- the Tajik Sunday schools may ultimately play a very different linguistic, cultural and even political role for the Tajik community in the Russian capital than Kalandarov and Russian officials may assume or want.
In addition to these weekly classes, the Nur Organization has set up a two-week long camp every summer since 2004. At these sessions too, Kalandarov says, the stress is on “preserving one’s own national and cultural identity” as well as on “acclimatizing” to an ethnically and religiously different broader community.
Kalandarov is clearly quite taken with this effort, but he ends his article on a note of concern: such activities, he says, will not be able to “correct the situation with inter-ethnic relations in the Moscow megalopolis.” For that to happen, the Russian government will have to intervene, and at least some elements of Russian society will have to change.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Elite Deeply Divided on How to Deal with Estonia
Paul Goble
Vienna, April 11 – The most senior levels of the Russian government are deeply divided on how to react to Estonia’s plans to move a memorial to Soviet war veterans, a situation that may give Tallinn more freedom of action but also one that makes Moscow’s future actions less rather than more predictable.
In an article posted online this week, Tat’yana Stanovaya argues that the Russian elite is divided between “hawks and businessmen,” with the hawks wanting to put pressure on Estonia to reverse course and the businessmen desirous of doing nothing that would upset the transit of Russian oil (http://www.politcom.ru/article.php?id=4405).
According to the Moscow commentator, First Vice Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and Modest Kolerov who directs the Presidential administration for foreign ties are leaders of the “hawkish” faction. On April 4, Ivanov called for the imposition of a boycott on Estonian exports. And Kolerov has adopted an even tougher line.
Besides supporting Ivanov, the Presidential administrator recently said “if Estonia wants to become a Judas in relation to the memorial of those who fell in the Second World War, one must not do anything to help it avoid the shame of doing so” or “help Estonia to save face.”
Other senior Russian officials, including German Gref as well as a string of Russian Federation cabinet ministers and Duma leaders who intervened in various ways in the run-up to the recent Estonian parliamentary elections, presumably back the hawks on this issue as well.
And these hawks can count on the support of some activists among the ethnic Russian community in Estonia, at least a few of whom have made Moscow’s response to the war memorial a litmus test of the Russian Federation’s on again – off again backing of that community.
But however emotional the issue of the war memorial in Estonia may be for these and other Russians, many in Moscow have taken what Stanovaya calls a more “pragmatic” position, either out of a belief that such an approach will enhance Moscow’s interests or from crude economic calculations.
Among those in the “pragmatist” camp appear to be Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Duma’s international affairs committee. Shortly after Ivanov called for a boycott, Kosachev was quoted as saying that he personally would support the transfer of the war memorial if it were done in a “worthy” manner, a remark he subsequently disavowed.
But, according to Stanovaya, there is a much more powerful group of Russian officials and businessmen who back the pragmatists. Their leader is Gennadiy Timchenko, who not only controls the companies that send Russian oil through Estonia but is known to be one of President Vladimir Putin’s closest supporters.
Because the Kremlin at least for the present wants to present itself as a reliable supplier of oil and gas to Western Europe, he and other businessmen oppose taking any steps against Tallinn or Estonia more generally that might call the Western flows of oil into question.
“The victory of the pragmatic approach,” Stanovaya continues, will “significantly weaken” Kolerov. That may already be happenig: there are unconfirmed rumors in Moscow that the Kremlin may restructure the office Kolerov now heads and thus leave him without a Kremlin job (http://ura-inform.com/ru/print/politics/2007/04/04/rf_sbu).
Given these divisions in the Russian capital between what might be called the nationalists and the businessmen, Estonian leaders, including both Prime Minister Anders Ansip and President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, have more room to maneuver at least in the short term on this issue.
But precisely because Moscow is so divided, its future course of action remains far less predictable. Russia’s approach to Estonia could quickly change if the alignment of forces within the Russian political elite changes either on the issue of the war memorial or something else.
And that very unpredictability means that the relationship between Moscow and Tallinn will remain extremely risky and problematic, however much the pragmatists in both capitals may want it to be otherwise.
Vienna, April 11 – The most senior levels of the Russian government are deeply divided on how to react to Estonia’s plans to move a memorial to Soviet war veterans, a situation that may give Tallinn more freedom of action but also one that makes Moscow’s future actions less rather than more predictable.
In an article posted online this week, Tat’yana Stanovaya argues that the Russian elite is divided between “hawks and businessmen,” with the hawks wanting to put pressure on Estonia to reverse course and the businessmen desirous of doing nothing that would upset the transit of Russian oil (http://www.politcom.ru/article.php?id=4405).
According to the Moscow commentator, First Vice Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and Modest Kolerov who directs the Presidential administration for foreign ties are leaders of the “hawkish” faction. On April 4, Ivanov called for the imposition of a boycott on Estonian exports. And Kolerov has adopted an even tougher line.
Besides supporting Ivanov, the Presidential administrator recently said “if Estonia wants to become a Judas in relation to the memorial of those who fell in the Second World War, one must not do anything to help it avoid the shame of doing so” or “help Estonia to save face.”
Other senior Russian officials, including German Gref as well as a string of Russian Federation cabinet ministers and Duma leaders who intervened in various ways in the run-up to the recent Estonian parliamentary elections, presumably back the hawks on this issue as well.
And these hawks can count on the support of some activists among the ethnic Russian community in Estonia, at least a few of whom have made Moscow’s response to the war memorial a litmus test of the Russian Federation’s on again – off again backing of that community.
But however emotional the issue of the war memorial in Estonia may be for these and other Russians, many in Moscow have taken what Stanovaya calls a more “pragmatic” position, either out of a belief that such an approach will enhance Moscow’s interests or from crude economic calculations.
Among those in the “pragmatist” camp appear to be Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Duma’s international affairs committee. Shortly after Ivanov called for a boycott, Kosachev was quoted as saying that he personally would support the transfer of the war memorial if it were done in a “worthy” manner, a remark he subsequently disavowed.
But, according to Stanovaya, there is a much more powerful group of Russian officials and businessmen who back the pragmatists. Their leader is Gennadiy Timchenko, who not only controls the companies that send Russian oil through Estonia but is known to be one of President Vladimir Putin’s closest supporters.
Because the Kremlin at least for the present wants to present itself as a reliable supplier of oil and gas to Western Europe, he and other businessmen oppose taking any steps against Tallinn or Estonia more generally that might call the Western flows of oil into question.
“The victory of the pragmatic approach,” Stanovaya continues, will “significantly weaken” Kolerov. That may already be happenig: there are unconfirmed rumors in Moscow that the Kremlin may restructure the office Kolerov now heads and thus leave him without a Kremlin job (http://ura-inform.com/ru/print/politics/2007/04/04/rf_sbu).
Given these divisions in the Russian capital between what might be called the nationalists and the businessmen, Estonian leaders, including both Prime Minister Anders Ansip and President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, have more room to maneuver at least in the short term on this issue.
But precisely because Moscow is so divided, its future course of action remains far less predictable. Russia’s approach to Estonia could quickly change if the alignment of forces within the Russian political elite changes either on the issue of the war memorial or something else.
And that very unpredictability means that the relationship between Moscow and Tallinn will remain extremely risky and problematic, however much the pragmatists in both capitals may want it to be otherwise.
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