Paul Goble
Vienna, June 15 – The long-standing tensions between Ravil’ Gainutdin, the head of the Union of Muftis of Russia, and Talgat Tadzhuddin, the leader of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), exploded this week when Gainutdin leveled his sharpest charges yet at the leader of a Muslim community subordinate to Tadzhuddin.
On Thursday, Gainutdin convened a meeting of the SMR council to discuss the situation in St. Petersburg where two new ethnic Russian converts to Islam stand accused, in a case that has attracted widespread attention, of planning to assassinate that city’s governor, Valentina Matviyenko.
The SMR mufti told the Moscow meeting that the leaders of the Muslim community in St. Petersburg had failed to provide the necessary training among converts, had not kept the mosque there open for prayer, and had allowed the community to remain split along ethnic lines (http://www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=18756).
At present, he continued, the MSD of St. Petersburg and North-West Russia needs to address all these problems as well as the fact that there is only one mosque in the city and another under construction and none existing or being built in the oblast as a whole (http://www.rosbalt.ru/2007/06/14/299285.html).
To remedy what he said was the inadequate “structuring” of the one million-strong Muslim community in the northern capital, Gainutdin said he plans to appoint plenopotentiary representatives who will be attached to the offices of the governors of both St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast (http://www.regions.ru/news/2081241/).
Not surprisingly, the Mufti of St. Petersburg Dzhafar Ponchayev reacted angrily to Gainutdin’s criticism, clearly viewing the SMR head’s remarks as a cynical effort to exploit publicity about the Matvieyenko case and attract the favorable attention of the country’s political elite (http://www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=18764).
The St. Petersburg Muslim leader rejected all of Gainutdin’s specific criticisms: He said that the mosque there had an active educational program, that it was open when Muslims needed to pray – more than 3500 do there every Friday – and that there are no serious ethnic divisions among the city’s faithful.
But Ponchayev made clear that he was angry not so much by the specific remarks as by what he saw as Gainutdin’s presumption in making them. The SMR mufti suggests, Ponchayev said, “that we are guilty. But when there were terrorist acts in Moscow, why did not Ravil Gainutdin repulse them – ‘Nord Ost,’ the metro, the apartment buildings!”
Moreover, and more to the point, he continued, he and his fellow mullahs regularly talk with young people and as a result, “there is no more peaceful region in Russia than St. Petersburg.” And as to the number of mosques, the northern capital compares favorably with Moscow, which has only five (http://sedmitza.ru, June 15).
“Our MSD [Tadzhuddin’s Central MSD] was founded already under Catherine II. Our muftiate is three times larger than Gainutdin’s. He is nothing to us. Therefore, we are indifferent to anything he says. We will never subordinate ourselves to him” and to the SMR he heads.
Another St. Petersburg Muslim leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Regions.ru today “everything with us is in complete order. We are a cultured capital however much dogs bark at us. We meet routinely once a year with the authorities for [the holiday of] Sabantui. We also have conversations with priests and rabbis.”
“We don’t know any extremists,” the unnamed St. Petersburg Muslim said. “We pray in a timely fashion. If Gainutdin has problems, then let him speak about this. Moscow journalists relate to us very poorly.” He concluded the conversation, “Goodbye, and don’t call us again.”
Relations between the SMR and the Central MSD and especially between Gainudin and Tadzhuddin have never been good: Indeed, their differing positions on key issues and clashes between their very different personalities have been the stuff of critical commentary by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Some of the former have regularly speculated that these clashes have been orchestrated by those in the Russian government who do not want to see the emergence anytime soon of a strong, united and self-confident Muslim community in the Russian Federation.
And some in the latter have suggested that the inability of the two to cooperate provides what evidence is needed to show that Muslims in that country are not ready or able to work together, a situation that commentators like Roman Silant’yev have invoked to condemn many Muslim muftis.
But what this clash really reflects is the increasingly poor fit between the entire MSD system, itself a survival of tsarist and Soviet efforts to convert Islam, which is inherently a non-clerical and non-hierarchical community, into a single and thus more easily controlled structure resembling the Moscow Patriarchate.
The newly intensified clash between Gainutdin and Tadzhuddin at the very least will raise new questions about these arrangements and possibly force both Russia’s Muslims and the Russian state to re-examine all of them as each tries to find a way to manage an increasingly large Muslim minority in a non-Muslim state.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Siberian Regionalists Hope to Push Their Cause -- at the Municipal Level
Paul Goble
Vienna, June 15 – Many people in Siberia and the Russian Far East believe that their region should enjoy greater autonomy or even independence from Moscow, but for most of the last century, their attitudes about this have remained largely unfocused rather than taking on an organized political form.
As a result, most analysts in Moscow and the West have long dismissed Siberian regionalism – or “oblastnichestvo” as it is called in Russian – as only an intensified form of the local particularism found elsewhere in the Russian Federation or, at most, the reflection of the ideas of a small coterie of intellectuals and politicians.
In any case, the central Russian government has typically found it easy to undercut this trend, preventing its emergence by means of a variety of carrots – making massive investments in the region – and sticks – dividing up this region politically and marginalizing anyone there who expresses “oblastnik” attitudes too openly.
But now there are growing indications that Siberian regionalism may be gaining traction not only as an idea that some senior officials and many ordinary people in Siberia and the Far East endorse but also as a movement that is operating in various cities of that region and thus has remained beyond Moscow’s attention.
In an article posted yesterday on an Irkutsk web portal, Mikhail Kulekhov traces the recent history of regionalist ideas there and suggests that today’s “oblastniki” have adopted a strategy that could lead to the emergence of a powerful regionalist movement(http://babr.ru/index.php?pt=news&event=v1&IDE=38415).
At the end of the 1960s, he writes, Ivan Naymushkin, head of Bratskesstroi, gained so much power that he sat in the Soviet council of ministers and openly advocated the creation of a Baikal SSR which would unite Irkutsk and Chita oblasts, the Buryat ASSR, the Evenk Autonomous District, and part of Yakutia.
But after Naymushkin’s unexplained death in a helicopter crash in September 1973, support for this idea receded and did not resurface until Gorbachev’s time. Then, Kulekhov continues, people again began to talk about a Baikal Republic, an idea that was cut short by the end of the USSR.
In October 1993, at the time of Boris Yeltsin’s clash with the old parliament in Moscow, the leaders of most of the republics, oblasts, krays and republics declared the Russian president’s actions to be illegitimate, thus providing evidence of their unity but also serving as a wake-up call for Moscow to act against them.
But by the late 1990s, Siberian autonomy had become part of the programs of the majority of political groupings in Eastern Siberia: the Socialist Club, the Baikal Anarchist Union, and the Baikal People’s Front. And in 1998, a small group of activists – Kulekhov among them -- formed something called “the Liberation Army of Siberia.”
This trend attracted Moscow’s attention: On the one hand, the central government banned regional parties; and on the other the FSB insisted that the OAS change its name. The latter did, but to keep its initials, its leaders decided to call it the Oblastnik Alternative of Siberia, a group that works closely with the Baikal People’s Front.
More recently, Siberian regionalists were cheered, Kulekhov notes, when Irkutsk head Aleksandr Tishanin declared in 2006 “We are all one Siberian nation” and when the heads of the Tomsk, Novosibirsk, and Chita oblasts, as well as of the Khakass and Buryat republics criticized Moscow on behalf of Siberian interests.
Kulekhov almost certainly exaggerates how much these remarks reflect oblastnik views, but the sense among many in the Russian Far East that Moscow is far away and not especially interested in this region is beyond any doubt growing. Indeed, it may be exacerbated by President Putin’s decision to appoint outsiders to key posts there.
But however that may be, the oblastniki, Kulekhov says, have decided that they can best advance their cause by taking an active part in upcoming municipal elections, votes that take place below Moscow’s radar screen and the last places in the region where outcomes reflect the vote of the people rather than the choice of the Kremlin.
Vienna, June 15 – Many people in Siberia and the Russian Far East believe that their region should enjoy greater autonomy or even independence from Moscow, but for most of the last century, their attitudes about this have remained largely unfocused rather than taking on an organized political form.
As a result, most analysts in Moscow and the West have long dismissed Siberian regionalism – or “oblastnichestvo” as it is called in Russian – as only an intensified form of the local particularism found elsewhere in the Russian Federation or, at most, the reflection of the ideas of a small coterie of intellectuals and politicians.
In any case, the central Russian government has typically found it easy to undercut this trend, preventing its emergence by means of a variety of carrots – making massive investments in the region – and sticks – dividing up this region politically and marginalizing anyone there who expresses “oblastnik” attitudes too openly.
But now there are growing indications that Siberian regionalism may be gaining traction not only as an idea that some senior officials and many ordinary people in Siberia and the Far East endorse but also as a movement that is operating in various cities of that region and thus has remained beyond Moscow’s attention.
In an article posted yesterday on an Irkutsk web portal, Mikhail Kulekhov traces the recent history of regionalist ideas there and suggests that today’s “oblastniki” have adopted a strategy that could lead to the emergence of a powerful regionalist movement(http://babr.ru/index.php?pt=news&event=v1&IDE=38415).
At the end of the 1960s, he writes, Ivan Naymushkin, head of Bratskesstroi, gained so much power that he sat in the Soviet council of ministers and openly advocated the creation of a Baikal SSR which would unite Irkutsk and Chita oblasts, the Buryat ASSR, the Evenk Autonomous District, and part of Yakutia.
But after Naymushkin’s unexplained death in a helicopter crash in September 1973, support for this idea receded and did not resurface until Gorbachev’s time. Then, Kulekhov continues, people again began to talk about a Baikal Republic, an idea that was cut short by the end of the USSR.
In October 1993, at the time of Boris Yeltsin’s clash with the old parliament in Moscow, the leaders of most of the republics, oblasts, krays and republics declared the Russian president’s actions to be illegitimate, thus providing evidence of their unity but also serving as a wake-up call for Moscow to act against them.
But by the late 1990s, Siberian autonomy had become part of the programs of the majority of political groupings in Eastern Siberia: the Socialist Club, the Baikal Anarchist Union, and the Baikal People’s Front. And in 1998, a small group of activists – Kulekhov among them -- formed something called “the Liberation Army of Siberia.”
This trend attracted Moscow’s attention: On the one hand, the central government banned regional parties; and on the other the FSB insisted that the OAS change its name. The latter did, but to keep its initials, its leaders decided to call it the Oblastnik Alternative of Siberia, a group that works closely with the Baikal People’s Front.
More recently, Siberian regionalists were cheered, Kulekhov notes, when Irkutsk head Aleksandr Tishanin declared in 2006 “We are all one Siberian nation” and when the heads of the Tomsk, Novosibirsk, and Chita oblasts, as well as of the Khakass and Buryat republics criticized Moscow on behalf of Siberian interests.
Kulekhov almost certainly exaggerates how much these remarks reflect oblastnik views, but the sense among many in the Russian Far East that Moscow is far away and not especially interested in this region is beyond any doubt growing. Indeed, it may be exacerbated by President Putin’s decision to appoint outsiders to key posts there.
But however that may be, the oblastniki, Kulekhov says, have decided that they can best advance their cause by taking an active part in upcoming municipal elections, votes that take place below Moscow’s radar screen and the last places in the region where outcomes reflect the vote of the people rather than the choice of the Kremlin.
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