Paul Goble
Vienna, June 19 – Citizens in six post-Soviet states – the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan – remain divided both within and among each other over what kind of supra-national form of political integration, if any, they would be prepared to support.
The All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) together with the International Eurasian Monitor Research Agency combined data from polls this spring in the six countries about their attitudes about the CIS, a renewed USSR, and other possibilities (http://wciom.ru/novosti/press-vypushki/press-vypush/single/8378.html/).
According to these polls, support for the Commonwealth of Independent States remained relatively low among all these countries except Kazakhstan, ranging from a low of four percent in Ukraine to a range of nine to 12 percent of the population in Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia.
In Kazakhstan, however, 19 percent preferred membership in the CIS over other possibilities, up from 11 percent a year ago but the same figure that was found in polling conducted on this question two years ago, the VTsIOM analysis pointed out. The five others showed far less variation.
Support for membership in a smaller grouping of four states – Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan – was much higher both among the residents of these four and among others. Thirty-three percent of the Ukrainians, 25 percent of the Belarusians, and 18 to 21 percent of the Kazakhs backed this form of integration.
Among the other two, nine percent of the Armenians, but 39 percent of the Kyrgyz said they would like to see such a union and to have their own country a member of it, a position that VTsIOM presents without comment even though it is internally inconsistent.
With regard to the possibility of having their countries subsumed within a revived USSR, 10-13 percent of the respondents in Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan were supportive as were 15-17 percent of those in Russia and Ukraine, and 23 percent among the Kyrgyz polled.
Over the last two years, the share interested in such a solution fell in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, with the decline in Russia – to 10 percent – being the largest. In Ukraine, on the other hand, the percentage of those expressing support for such an arrangement increased over the same period from seven to 12 percent.
The percentages of those who said they would like to live in the European Union were 22-23 percent among Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Armenians, and 11-13 percent among Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Over the last two years, the percentage in Ukraine favoring this solution fell from 30 percent to 19 percent.
And finally, there were those who said they would prefer to live in their own country without its being a member of any larger community. Forty-one percent of Armenians, 36 percent of Russians, 28 percent of Kazakhs, 21-24 percent of Ukrainians and Belarusians and 14 percent of Kyrgyz backed this idea.
The VTsIOM report commented that “the most ‘open’ for integrative initiatives including on the post-Soviet space are Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. And conversely, ‘isolationist’ tendencies in a greater degree are displayed by the residents of Armenia and Russia.”
As with all polls, one should be careful about making any sweeping judgments. But there is one key conclusion that seems overwhelmingly justified: Nearly 16 years after the Soviet Union disintegrated, the citizens of the successor states are uncertain about what their status should be – self-standing states or members of something larger.
And such uncertainty, which quite strikingly does not seem to be declining as rapidly as many had expected, clearly will represent more than simply background noise as these countries and their populations try to arrange or rearrange their relationships over the next generation or even more.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Muslims Said At Risk Because of Their Ignorance of West
Paul Goble
Vienna, June 19 – Muslims in general and their co-religionists in the post-Soviet states in particular neither know nor understand much about the most important “other” in their lives – the non-Muslim West. And because that is so, they are largely “defenseless” against the latter’s enormous communications skills and apparatus.
Geydar Dzhemal, president of the Islamic Committee of Russia, made this argument in an April 2007 article in the newspaper of the Russian Federation’s Azerbaijani community (http://azcongress.ru/article.php?314). His article has now been reposted at http://www.islamnews.ru/index.php?name=Articles&file=article&sid=972.
Dzhemal, who has been criticized in Russia for his often radical views about the Middle East and Islam, notes that the West has been very attentive to the world of Islam in the last 50 years, but he points out that the Muslim world has not developed a similar attentiveness to the West.
The reasons for this imbalance, he continues, lie in the basic nature of the two communities and the very different trajectories of their intellectual traditions. Until the last century, most people in the West treated the Muslims as part of an undifferentiated and essentially inferior “other.”
But then, as Western governments and scholars came into closer contact with this variegated “other,” they began to study its component parts. Over time, many in the West were attracted to parts of the “other” world, and in some cases, even developed cults about it.
But the situation among the governments of Muslim countries and their scholars remained entirely different. When the latter came into contact with “other” communities of faith, Dzhemal argues, they recoiled in horror from “the very idea of comparative religious studies.”
The unspoken reason for this, he suggests, is that Muslims recognized that if they adopted “a methodologically objective” approach to the study of these other religious communities, they would be obligated to turn a similarly objective eye on their own faith and the world it had produced.
Most have been reluctant to do so, he continues, because “Muslims are accustomed to presenting themselves with an uncritical optimism and avoiding any self-analysis.” And consequently, virtually all attempts by Muslims – and Dzhemal acknowledges that there have been some – are either “banalities or hopeless cliches.”
This failure to pay attention and to study the most influential cultural center of the world at the present time, Dzhemal says, inevitably “leads to the most dangerous illusions” not only among Muslims living among Europeans but especially among Muslims living in former communist countries.
Because of the Soviet system’s anti-Western propaganda, many Muslims at the moment of the collapse of the USSR had come to believe that “the West [was] a kingdom of progress and justice” and did not analyze the actual situation or consider why they might have accepted this view.
But Dzhemal is clearly much less concerned about that past than about what he sees as the even more serious problems ahead that arise from the failure of Muslims to do what they have to do to know and understanding the West in order to defend themselves against its “information and political technology machine.”
Dzhemal’s argument is both intriguing and important because he provides an unusual justification for Muslims to study the West without giving up on their faith as some have done but rather doing so in order to defend and enrich their own lives and intellectual tradition.
Given Dzhemal’s standing among Muslims in the Russian Federation and especially among that countyr’s Azerbaijani community, it will be interesting to see whether others pick up on his argument and actually begin the difficult business of criticism and self-criticism which his stance will require.
Vienna, June 19 – Muslims in general and their co-religionists in the post-Soviet states in particular neither know nor understand much about the most important “other” in their lives – the non-Muslim West. And because that is so, they are largely “defenseless” against the latter’s enormous communications skills and apparatus.
Geydar Dzhemal, president of the Islamic Committee of Russia, made this argument in an April 2007 article in the newspaper of the Russian Federation’s Azerbaijani community (http://azcongress.ru/article.php?314). His article has now been reposted at http://www.islamnews.ru/index.php?name=Articles&file=article&sid=972.
Dzhemal, who has been criticized in Russia for his often radical views about the Middle East and Islam, notes that the West has been very attentive to the world of Islam in the last 50 years, but he points out that the Muslim world has not developed a similar attentiveness to the West.
The reasons for this imbalance, he continues, lie in the basic nature of the two communities and the very different trajectories of their intellectual traditions. Until the last century, most people in the West treated the Muslims as part of an undifferentiated and essentially inferior “other.”
But then, as Western governments and scholars came into closer contact with this variegated “other,” they began to study its component parts. Over time, many in the West were attracted to parts of the “other” world, and in some cases, even developed cults about it.
But the situation among the governments of Muslim countries and their scholars remained entirely different. When the latter came into contact with “other” communities of faith, Dzhemal argues, they recoiled in horror from “the very idea of comparative religious studies.”
The unspoken reason for this, he suggests, is that Muslims recognized that if they adopted “a methodologically objective” approach to the study of these other religious communities, they would be obligated to turn a similarly objective eye on their own faith and the world it had produced.
Most have been reluctant to do so, he continues, because “Muslims are accustomed to presenting themselves with an uncritical optimism and avoiding any self-analysis.” And consequently, virtually all attempts by Muslims – and Dzhemal acknowledges that there have been some – are either “banalities or hopeless cliches.”
This failure to pay attention and to study the most influential cultural center of the world at the present time, Dzhemal says, inevitably “leads to the most dangerous illusions” not only among Muslims living among Europeans but especially among Muslims living in former communist countries.
Because of the Soviet system’s anti-Western propaganda, many Muslims at the moment of the collapse of the USSR had come to believe that “the West [was] a kingdom of progress and justice” and did not analyze the actual situation or consider why they might have accepted this view.
But Dzhemal is clearly much less concerned about that past than about what he sees as the even more serious problems ahead that arise from the failure of Muslims to do what they have to do to know and understanding the West in order to defend themselves against its “information and political technology machine.”
Dzhemal’s argument is both intriguing and important because he provides an unusual justification for Muslims to study the West without giving up on their faith as some have done but rather doing so in order to defend and enrich their own lives and intellectual tradition.
Given Dzhemal’s standing among Muslims in the Russian Federation and especially among that countyr’s Azerbaijani community, it will be interesting to see whether others pick up on his argument and actually begin the difficult business of criticism and self-criticism which his stance will require.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
