Paul Goble
Vienna, April 23 – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s extraordinary appointment of sitting Krasnodar Governor Aleksandr Tkachev and the latter’s nearly unanimous confirmation by the local legislature -- which is dominated by the pro-Kremlin “United Russia” Party -- could lead officials elsewhere to follow his openly xenophobic approach.
Tkachev, who has been governor since 2000 and whose second term was not due to expire until March 2009, earlier this month asked Putin to appoint him now as a mark of special favor. Putin did so on April 19 and today the regional assembly approved his appointment by a vote of 59 to one.
That course of events inevitably will be studied by others especially since Tkachev has attracted attention more attention in the past not only for his failed effort to seize Tuzla Island from Ukraine but also for statements and actions which, as RIA Novosti reported today, “some commentators” view as openly “racist.”
In perhaps the most widely quoted of his infamous remarks, Tkachev said in March 2002 “one can define a legal or an illegal immigrant simply by family name alone. Names ending in ‘ian,’ ‘dze,’ ‘shvili,’ or ‘ogli’ are illegal, just as their bearers are” (“Novaya gazeta,” July 11-14, 2002, cited in http://www.anticompromat.ru/tkachov/tkachbio.html).
Despite such remarks – and Tkachev has regularly repeated and acted on them in the past – at least some commentators saw Tkachev as almost an “improvement” over his predecessor. The man he succeeded, Nikolai Kondratenko, was a notorious anti-Semite; Tkachev, in contrast, has directed his bile at Armenians, Turks and Kurds.
Because of Putin’s appointment of Tkachev, because his kray is the third most populous federation subject, and because it abuts the Caucasus tinderbox, Sergei Markedonov has examined Tkachev’s approach as a possible model of where other Russian regions may be heading (http://www.polit.ru/analytics/2007/04/19/kuban.html).
The Moscow specialist on ethnic politics in the north Caucasus notes that “the ethno-political development of the so-called ‘Russian regions’ of the North Caucasus (Krasnodar and Stavropol krays, and Rostov oblast) in contrast to the situation in the national republics of the Russia South have attracted little attention.”
On the one hand, this reflects the Moscow stereotype that the non-Russian areas are a threat while the Russian regions are allies. And on the other, it is the product of unwillingness in Moscow to take seriously the many ways in which developments in Russian regions could undermine the declared policies of the center.
According to Markedonov, this is particularly unfortunate in the case of Tkachev’s Krasnodar kray. There, “ethno-defensive nationalism has become official, liberalism has been declared an anti-state and anti-Russian phenomenon, and traditionalist values -- communalism, collectivism, and anti-progressivism -- have been broadly communicated.”
All of that represents a problem for Moscow where people now forget that “the doctrine of ‘constructive resistance to Moscow’ was born not in Dudayev’s Grozniy and not in Shaimiyev’s Kazan. Its author was” Nikolai Denisov, a deputy governor in Krasnodar kray under Kondratenko.
“Resistance to liberalization and modernization coming from the Kremlin,” Markedonov writes, “became the most important component of the ‘Kuban idea.’” And it led officials there to behave in ways that resulted in “the first officially realized ethnic cleansing” of the post-1991 era – the expulsion to the U.S. of the Meskhetian Turks.
This “model of Russian anti-liberal traditionalism,” the Moscow specialist continues, is something against which the federal authorities have up to now “not found the political will to assess in a principled away and to oppose xenophobia and traditionalism.” Indeed, by backing Tkachev, Putin has now appeared to bless it.
As a result, there is a very real threat that “the Kuban experience will be disseminated more broadly and deeper, and could over time conquer all of Russia.” Should that happen, Markedonov implies, Russia almost certainly would lose any chance for ethnic peace and political modernization.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Moves from Political Correctness toward Censorship
Paul Goble
Vienna, April 23 – As the Kremlin expands its influence in the media in advance of the 2008 elections, officials at Moscow television and radio channels three times over the last week have censored their programming apparently out of a desire to be politically correct with those above them rather than as a result of direct orders from above.
According to Russian commentator Svetlana Samoylova today, these three unrelated events do not reflect the onset of censorship, but she argues that so “concentrated” are they in number that they almost certainly will have “a cumulative effect” of leading to others (http://www.politcom.ru/print.php?id=4468).
The first of these incidents took place last Tuesday, April 17. On that date, documentary filmmaker Valeriy Balayan accused the Moscow “Culture” television channel of subjecting his film on the life of Russian human rights activist and literary figure Lev Kopelev to censorship.
The channel eliminated references to the fact that in 1945 Kopelev, then an officer in the Red Army, was condemned to the GULAG because he had protested against the use of force against German civilians in East Prussia, something Moscow’s current “political correctness” does not permit, Samloylova said.
The second incident involved a mid-week decision by the managers of the Russian News Service not to allow journalists there to make any references to the leadership of the opposition coalition “The Other Russia” including Mikhail Kas’yanov, Garri Kasparov, and Eduard Limonov.
Moreover, the managers decreed, journalists could invite as “political newsmakers” only leaders” from the pro-Kremlin “United Russia” party, members of the Social Chamber and “’official’” human rights activists like Vladimir Lukin and Ella Panfilova.
Journalists at the channel have announced plans to resign en masse to protest this decision. And former chief editor of the station, Mikhail Baklanov said that he considers this development to be “immediately connected with preparations for the elections” later this year and next.
And the third incident, at the end of last week, involved the selective editing of a French documentary about the “’color’” revolutions in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. Not only did the editors completely eliminate the section filmed in Russia, but they also eliminated any reference to the French national who directed the film.
“We don’t want to be assistants of the Russian authorities,” Herve Chabalier, an Alliance France Presse manager in the Russian capital said. “We thought that Russian television had learned to work professionally, but we have to acknowledge that this is not the case.”
(Samoylova pointedly noted that Radio Liberty’s Russian Service had given extensive coverage to this last development.)
In summing up these three events, Samoylova added that the Russian media is becoming a “propaganda” arm of the state and that this is generating “internal resistance” on the part of journalistic groups. But at the same time, she said that these developments should not be overread.
They do not in and of themselves yet show that the Putin regime has changed fundamentally – only that it is sending out signals that media managers must take harsher steps to isolate and thus minimize the influence of what she and others refer to as the “extra-systemic” politicians the Kremlin opposes.
Vienna, April 23 – As the Kremlin expands its influence in the media in advance of the 2008 elections, officials at Moscow television and radio channels three times over the last week have censored their programming apparently out of a desire to be politically correct with those above them rather than as a result of direct orders from above.
According to Russian commentator Svetlana Samoylova today, these three unrelated events do not reflect the onset of censorship, but she argues that so “concentrated” are they in number that they almost certainly will have “a cumulative effect” of leading to others (http://www.politcom.ru/print.php?id=4468).
The first of these incidents took place last Tuesday, April 17. On that date, documentary filmmaker Valeriy Balayan accused the Moscow “Culture” television channel of subjecting his film on the life of Russian human rights activist and literary figure Lev Kopelev to censorship.
The channel eliminated references to the fact that in 1945 Kopelev, then an officer in the Red Army, was condemned to the GULAG because he had protested against the use of force against German civilians in East Prussia, something Moscow’s current “political correctness” does not permit, Samloylova said.
The second incident involved a mid-week decision by the managers of the Russian News Service not to allow journalists there to make any references to the leadership of the opposition coalition “The Other Russia” including Mikhail Kas’yanov, Garri Kasparov, and Eduard Limonov.
Moreover, the managers decreed, journalists could invite as “political newsmakers” only leaders” from the pro-Kremlin “United Russia” party, members of the Social Chamber and “’official’” human rights activists like Vladimir Lukin and Ella Panfilova.
Journalists at the channel have announced plans to resign en masse to protest this decision. And former chief editor of the station, Mikhail Baklanov said that he considers this development to be “immediately connected with preparations for the elections” later this year and next.
And the third incident, at the end of last week, involved the selective editing of a French documentary about the “’color’” revolutions in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. Not only did the editors completely eliminate the section filmed in Russia, but they also eliminated any reference to the French national who directed the film.
“We don’t want to be assistants of the Russian authorities,” Herve Chabalier, an Alliance France Presse manager in the Russian capital said. “We thought that Russian television had learned to work professionally, but we have to acknowledge that this is not the case.”
(Samoylova pointedly noted that Radio Liberty’s Russian Service had given extensive coverage to this last development.)
In summing up these three events, Samoylova added that the Russian media is becoming a “propaganda” arm of the state and that this is generating “internal resistance” on the part of journalistic groups. But at the same time, she said that these developments should not be overread.
They do not in and of themselves yet show that the Putin regime has changed fundamentally – only that it is sending out signals that media managers must take harsher steps to isolate and thus minimize the influence of what she and others refer to as the “extra-systemic” politicians the Kremlin opposes.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
