Paul Goble
Vienna, April 26 – Arguments about Boris Yeltsin’s place in history will not end until Russians escape from the identity “blind alley” in which they have been for much of the past 15 years and stop thinking about their country as a remnant of the Soviet Union, according to a Moscow commentator
In an essay posted online today, Sergei Markedonov, a specialist on ethnicity and identity issues, argues that the first Russian president’s mission, as yet unfinished, was to make Russians proud of their country and its role in destroying communism and comfortable with themselves (http://www.polit.ru/author/2007/04/26/eltsin.html).
There are compelling reasons to think that Yeltsin’s project will ultimately succeed, Markedonov continues. “Russian citizens do not now have and will not have any other state. The restoration of the USSR is impossible.” And consequently, the country they must come to terms with is the one Yeltsin “built from scratch.”
Despite many mistakes, the Moscow analyst suggests, Yeltsin made an enormous contribution to Russia’s development, one that all Russians should be proud of. Not only did he not take the kind of revenge on his opponents typical of earlier Russian and Soviet leaders, but he also did three things that are worth remembering always.
First and most important, Markedonov notes, Yeltsin’s management of both the end of communism and the breakup of the USSR meant “Russia did not repeat the experience of the Balkans.” He, not his successor, kept Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus from becoming nuclear powers and prevented violent disputes on republic borders.
This dog that didn’t bark, one that as a result has not attracted as much attention in Yeltsin’s obituaries as it deserves, Markedonov argues, “saved Russia from bloody confrontations with Ukraine over Crimea and the Donbas and with Kazakhstan over Northern and Eastern Kazakhstan (pre-revolutionary ‘Southern Siberia’).”
Second, and this too has not been stressed enough, Markedonov says, Yeltsin succeeded not only in “stopping six armed conflicts on the territory of the former USSR without the help of the United States or the European Union” but also secured international recognition for “Russian dominance on the post-Soviet space.”
That is not to say that Yeltsin did not make mistakes in this area and did not drive some of the post-Soviet states away from Moscow as a result, the Moscow commentator suggests. But it is to insist that Yeltsin did many of the things that Russians today are inclined and even encouraged to give credit to Vladimir Putin.
And third, Yeltsin played a large and generally unheralded role in the restoration of independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, something most Russians and people in the West do not remember and that many of the citizens of these countries now in NATO and EU have tended to forget.
“Where would the freedom of the Baltic countries and their ‘European tickets’ be if it had not been for the firm position of the Russian leader in 1991?” Markedonov asks rhetorically. “In the cold January days, when the West was quite passive about what was taking place [there],” Russia’s president backed “those struggling for independence.”
In saying that, Markedonov alludes to but does not describe the remarkable events of January 13, 1991. Following the killing of 14 Lithuanians by Soviet forces at the Vilnius TV tower, Yeltsin flew to Tallinn to sign agreements with Estonian and Latvian officials recognizing the right of those republics to be independent. (Lithuanian officials were unable to arrive in time to do so.)
Even more significant, Yeltsin issued an appeal, which Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcast to the peoples of the Soviet Union, calling on Russian officers and soldiers not to obey “illegal orders to fire on unarmed civilians or freely elected governments.”
Yeltsin’s statement, far tougher than those issued by Western governments, prevented a broader bloodbath in the Baltic countries and other independence-minded republics as well. But not surprisingly, many Soviet officials viewed what Yeltsin had done as sedition and demanded that something be done against the Russian president.
One idea they reportedly had was to blow Yeltsin’s plane up on its way back to Moscow. One official in Estonia who heard about that horrendous plot told Yeltsin about it and provided with him a car in which the Russian leader was driven to St. Petersburg the following morning and then put on a regular Aeroflot flight back to Moscow.
That official was the commandant of the Soviet airbase at Tartu, Major General Dzhokhar Dudayev, the man who was to become the first president of Chechnya-Ichkeria and who was killed on Yeltsin’s order five years later. That pattern too is part of Yeltsin’s unfinished legacy, although it is one that few Russians are yet prepared to accept.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Russia Said to Need Islamic Banks to Regularize Cash Flows
Paul Goble
Vienna, April 26 – The Russian Federation would benefit from the creation of a network of financial institutions operating according to Islamic norms because Muslims there would then place their money in “a transparent and legitimate banking system” rather than rely on informal and unregulated channels, according to a Muslim banker.
In an interview on Islamnews.ru today, Adelet Dzhabiyev, head of Russia’s first Islamic bank, said Russian security officials understand this but many other Russians believe that an Islamic bank would engage in “money-laundering and the financing of terrorism” (http://www.islamnews.ru.index.php?name=Articles&file=article&sid=863).
Those who think so could not be more wrong, the founder of the Badr-Forte Bank continued. Indeed, by attracting the funds Russia’s Muslims now hold into the banking system, he argued, Moscow could limit, as the United States and other Western governments already have, possibilities for transfer payments to Islamist radicals.
(The Russian Muslim banker notes that Western countries provide a range of approaches that Moscow might want to try, from allowing the creation of distinctively Muslim banks or supporting the establishment of Islamic sections within larger commercial banks.)
Islam prescribes precise rules for banking operations, rules that are very different from those generally used by Western-style financial institutions. Perhaps the most significant of these differences concerns the payment or acceptance of interest: Western banks allow it; Islamic banks do not.
Until recently, few of Russia’s Muslims either understood or appeared to care about such distinctions and generally deposited their money in one of the 1200 regular Russian banks at roughly the same rate as non-Muslims in the Russian Federation. But that is now changing and changing fast, Dzhabiyev said.
Ever more Muslims in the Russian Federation are following the provisions of the Koran and the Sunna, and many of them are now refusing to deposit money in banks that do not conform to Islamic rules. As a result, Muslims there hold a great deal of their funds in cash, something that limits the ability of the state to regulate how it is used.
Given their increasing numbers and wealth, however, the share of the financial pie in Russia occupied by Muslims is growing, a development that he suggests Russian officials have a self-interest in ensuring that such monies are available for investment in the country’s economy.
Unfortunately, Dzhabiyev continued, many Russian officials and politicians still fail to think “strategically” on this question, and the Russian government continues to put obstacles on the path to the development of a banking system and other financial institutions operating in conformity to Islamic precepts.
This situation could be easily remedied, he said, were the authorities to “create conditions so that the funds of Muslims could leave the informal channels and to as large an extent as possible, be included in the economic exchange of the country through various officially registered and legitimate structures.”
And to take advantage of such possibilities, Dzhabiyev argued, the Muslims of the Russian Federation “in turn must create suitable structures everywhere and in large quantities” – perhaps at first not banks but rather other financial institutions like cooperatives that the faithful could use if these structures follow Islamic law.
Despite this description of what might be possible, Dzhabiyev did not sound optimistic about the prospects for Islamic banking in Russia anytime soon. But another development this week suggests that the Muslims there may soon be flexing their economic muscle -- albeit in a more traditional way.
At a conference in Kazan on Tuesday, academics, religious leaders, and Tatarstan officials jointly called on the Russian State Duma to pass legislation that would allow the reestablishment of waqfs, the self-sustaining economic bodies created by Muslim contributions that support mosques and organize welfare among the faithful.
Such institutions were widespread in the Middle Volga and Central Asia prior to 1917 and in the first decade of Soviet power, and conference participants pointedly suggested that the “federal authorities [should] reanimate this pre-revolutionary system”
(http://www.islam.ru/rus/2007-04-25/#16121).
If Moscow does agree, such a step would make the more than 8,000 parishes of Russian Islam more financially independent not only from the state but also from foreign donors. And that change in turn would focus new attention on the financial clout of Russia’s Islamic community and could provide the foundation for Islamic banking there.
Vienna, April 26 – The Russian Federation would benefit from the creation of a network of financial institutions operating according to Islamic norms because Muslims there would then place their money in “a transparent and legitimate banking system” rather than rely on informal and unregulated channels, according to a Muslim banker.
In an interview on Islamnews.ru today, Adelet Dzhabiyev, head of Russia’s first Islamic bank, said Russian security officials understand this but many other Russians believe that an Islamic bank would engage in “money-laundering and the financing of terrorism” (http://www.islamnews.ru.index.php?name=Articles&file=article&sid=863).
Those who think so could not be more wrong, the founder of the Badr-Forte Bank continued. Indeed, by attracting the funds Russia’s Muslims now hold into the banking system, he argued, Moscow could limit, as the United States and other Western governments already have, possibilities for transfer payments to Islamist radicals.
(The Russian Muslim banker notes that Western countries provide a range of approaches that Moscow might want to try, from allowing the creation of distinctively Muslim banks or supporting the establishment of Islamic sections within larger commercial banks.)
Islam prescribes precise rules for banking operations, rules that are very different from those generally used by Western-style financial institutions. Perhaps the most significant of these differences concerns the payment or acceptance of interest: Western banks allow it; Islamic banks do not.
Until recently, few of Russia’s Muslims either understood or appeared to care about such distinctions and generally deposited their money in one of the 1200 regular Russian banks at roughly the same rate as non-Muslims in the Russian Federation. But that is now changing and changing fast, Dzhabiyev said.
Ever more Muslims in the Russian Federation are following the provisions of the Koran and the Sunna, and many of them are now refusing to deposit money in banks that do not conform to Islamic rules. As a result, Muslims there hold a great deal of their funds in cash, something that limits the ability of the state to regulate how it is used.
Given their increasing numbers and wealth, however, the share of the financial pie in Russia occupied by Muslims is growing, a development that he suggests Russian officials have a self-interest in ensuring that such monies are available for investment in the country’s economy.
Unfortunately, Dzhabiyev continued, many Russian officials and politicians still fail to think “strategically” on this question, and the Russian government continues to put obstacles on the path to the development of a banking system and other financial institutions operating in conformity to Islamic precepts.
This situation could be easily remedied, he said, were the authorities to “create conditions so that the funds of Muslims could leave the informal channels and to as large an extent as possible, be included in the economic exchange of the country through various officially registered and legitimate structures.”
And to take advantage of such possibilities, Dzhabiyev argued, the Muslims of the Russian Federation “in turn must create suitable structures everywhere and in large quantities” – perhaps at first not banks but rather other financial institutions like cooperatives that the faithful could use if these structures follow Islamic law.
Despite this description of what might be possible, Dzhabiyev did not sound optimistic about the prospects for Islamic banking in Russia anytime soon. But another development this week suggests that the Muslims there may soon be flexing their economic muscle -- albeit in a more traditional way.
At a conference in Kazan on Tuesday, academics, religious leaders, and Tatarstan officials jointly called on the Russian State Duma to pass legislation that would allow the reestablishment of waqfs, the self-sustaining economic bodies created by Muslim contributions that support mosques and organize welfare among the faithful.
Such institutions were widespread in the Middle Volga and Central Asia prior to 1917 and in the first decade of Soviet power, and conference participants pointedly suggested that the “federal authorities [should] reanimate this pre-revolutionary system”
(http://www.islam.ru/rus/2007-04-25/#16121).
If Moscow does agree, such a step would make the more than 8,000 parishes of Russian Islam more financially independent not only from the state but also from foreign donors. And that change in turn would focus new attention on the financial clout of Russia’s Islamic community and could provide the foundation for Islamic banking there.
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