Paul Goble
Vienna, July 5 – President Vladimir Putin’s continuing efforts to re-centralize state power has had a far greater impact on the predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays than on the non-Russian republics and, as a result, are generating a separatist backlash among those the Kremlin leader has assumed are his natural allies.
In an article posted on the APN.ru website today, Moscow analyst Rem Latypov explains why he believes this is so, why this particular development could prove even more threatening to Moscow than non-Russian nationalism, and what the Kremlin can and should do to counter it (http://www.apn.ru/publications/print17368.htm).
In his effort to reconstruct “the power vertical” that had been destroyed during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, Latypov suggests, Putin has pursued a seven-prong strategy. First, he reformed the Federation Council to weaken the leaders of the regions and republics.
Second, he created the seven Federal Districts and appointed plenipotentiary representatives who were to serve as his proconsuls in these larger areas. Third, he abolished the elections of regional leaders thereby limiting their authority. Fourth, he also eliminated most federal ministries charged with supervising regional issues.
Fifth, Putin insisted on a common legal space across the country, using his powers to bring the legislation of the regions and republics into line with federal law. Sixth, he promoted the expansion of Moscow and St. Petersburg economic groups into the regions to undermine the power bases of the regional leaders.
And seventh, he used the powers of the prosecutor’s offices not only to take control of key institutions by charging those in his way with crimes but also by creating a climate resembling the Soviet past in which everyone could be charged with some violation and thus could not be secure in his person or position.
All these approaches, Latypov argues, hit the regions where ethnic Russians formed the majority far harder than the non-Russian republics. Moscow officials and businessmen found it harder to penetrage the economies of the non-Russian areas. And the center often made concessions to them lest they move in a Chechnya-like direction.
Naturally, such policies, and especially the fact that the leaders of ethnic Russian regions feel that they suffer unequal treatment compared to non-Russian areas, could not fail to generate a backlash against Moscow, one that in many cases takes the form of “separatist inclinations.”
Disturbingly, Latypov continues, this trend resembles all too closely what happened to the Soviet Union 16 years ago. That country collapsed “in the first instance” because the elites of the republics were furious about Moscow’s efforts to rein them in and concluded that they could do better without central supervision.
Now, he argues, “an anti-imperialist discourse” has been adopted by people who typically refer to themselves and are referred to by others as “regionalists” or “confederalists,” who believe that “traditionally Russian regions have been deprived of freedom and independence.”
Some of these people are even beginning to talk about the formation of a “Rus’ Confederacy” or to consider the ideas of NORN, a radical extremist group that argues Russians should secede from the Russian Federation in order to create a genuine nation state of, for, and by Russians alone.
So far, these attitudes have not crystallized into a movement and thus do not represent any immediate threat, Latypov says. But it is entirely possible that if the regime continues to act as it has, it will find itself in “a dead end,” a place where it won’t be able to draw support from either Russian or non-Russian groups.
What should Moscow do? Latypov has an answer, but it is not one that many around Putin will find comforting or even acceptable. He suggests that “the success of ‘counter-separatist measures’ is possible only” under one condition: Such measures must “fulfill the task that separatism sets for itself.”
That is, these measures must give the regions defined in terms of administrative units rather than national-territorial ones real powers and a real voice because if they do not, then the country itself will again be at risk, however much Putin and his supporters talk about a new age of stability.
Moving in that direction will not be easy, Latypov says. On the one hand, there will be those who will see any concession as an encouragement to demand more powers for the regions up to and including secession from the Russian Federation, much as the union republics did in 1991.
And on the other, such a change in direction will appear to some as kowtowing to the pro-Western model of federalism that the Yeltsin era typified, one that also could threaten the territorial integrity of the state not so much by generating demands for secession but by creating a central government incapable of reining them in.
Even if Putin decides to make this change, Latypov concludes, it will not be “a panacea for all the problems and crisis factors which threaten Russia.” But he says, “it is the single obvious way out of the dead end which the country has in recent times been driven into.”
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Kremlin Aiding Russia’s Muslim Universities the American Way
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 5 – Moscow has adopted the same approach the U.S. has taken with regard to religious schools in order to provide financial support to Russia’s Muslim universities – pairing secular institutions with these religious institutions so that the former can provide instruction to students in the latter in “non-religious” subjects.
Aleksei Grishin, an advisor in the Presidential Administration, outlined this two-year-old effort in a June 26 speech to a Moscow conference on “The Development of the Religious Education of Russia’s Muslims.” His remarks have now been posted online (http://www.muslim.ru/1/cont/23/1195.htm).
He said that the Russian Ministry of Education and Science has paired five Islamic universities with five state institutions so that students working on their decrees in various religious disciplines can receive training in secular subjects like literature, mathematics, and computer science.
The five state institutions involved in this effort are the Moscow State Linguistics University, the Kuban State University, the Nizhniy Novgorod State University, the Smolniy Institute of Free Arts and Sciences of the St. Petersburg State University, and the North-Caucasus State Technical University.
The five Muslim universities paired with them are respectively the Moscow Islamic University, the Russian Islamic University in Kazan, the Russian Islamic University in Ufa, the North Caucasus Islamic University in Nalchik, and the North Caucasus Islamic Center in the Daghestani capital of Makhachkala.
This arrangement, Grishin said, helps to raise the standards in Islamic training in Russia “to a new contemporary level” and also to “reduce the demand” among Muslims for training in Muslim institutions abroad, a major goal of the Kremlin which is concerned about the influence of radical Islamists on Russian Muslims.
Unlike in the United States, however, no one has yet gone to court in an effort to challenge this effort by an officially secular government to aid religious education. But that may soon change in the superheated politics in the run-up to the parliamentary elections at the end of this year and the presidential vote next.
On the one hand, Grishin’s speech, now that it is beginning to be reported in the media, seems certain to attract new attention to this issue. And on the other, he indicated that at the present time, the Kremlin is considering “concrete measures for the support of Islamic education,” an indication that even this kind of assistance may not be enough.
But at the same time, Muslim groups are certain to press for assistance of both kinds, because the government’s program currently provides help to only five of the 52 Muslim higher educational institutions and none at all to the vastly larger network of middle and primary Muslim training schools.
Vienna, July 5 – Moscow has adopted the same approach the U.S. has taken with regard to religious schools in order to provide financial support to Russia’s Muslim universities – pairing secular institutions with these religious institutions so that the former can provide instruction to students in the latter in “non-religious” subjects.
Aleksei Grishin, an advisor in the Presidential Administration, outlined this two-year-old effort in a June 26 speech to a Moscow conference on “The Development of the Religious Education of Russia’s Muslims.” His remarks have now been posted online (http://www.muslim.ru/1/cont/23/1195.htm).
He said that the Russian Ministry of Education and Science has paired five Islamic universities with five state institutions so that students working on their decrees in various religious disciplines can receive training in secular subjects like literature, mathematics, and computer science.
The five state institutions involved in this effort are the Moscow State Linguistics University, the Kuban State University, the Nizhniy Novgorod State University, the Smolniy Institute of Free Arts and Sciences of the St. Petersburg State University, and the North-Caucasus State Technical University.
The five Muslim universities paired with them are respectively the Moscow Islamic University, the Russian Islamic University in Kazan, the Russian Islamic University in Ufa, the North Caucasus Islamic University in Nalchik, and the North Caucasus Islamic Center in the Daghestani capital of Makhachkala.
This arrangement, Grishin said, helps to raise the standards in Islamic training in Russia “to a new contemporary level” and also to “reduce the demand” among Muslims for training in Muslim institutions abroad, a major goal of the Kremlin which is concerned about the influence of radical Islamists on Russian Muslims.
Unlike in the United States, however, no one has yet gone to court in an effort to challenge this effort by an officially secular government to aid religious education. But that may soon change in the superheated politics in the run-up to the parliamentary elections at the end of this year and the presidential vote next.
On the one hand, Grishin’s speech, now that it is beginning to be reported in the media, seems certain to attract new attention to this issue. And on the other, he indicated that at the present time, the Kremlin is considering “concrete measures for the support of Islamic education,” an indication that even this kind of assistance may not be enough.
But at the same time, Muslim groups are certain to press for assistance of both kinds, because the government’s program currently provides help to only five of the 52 Muslim higher educational institutions and none at all to the vastly larger network of middle and primary Muslim training schools.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
