Paul Goble
Vienna, July 9 – The International Olympics Committee’s decision last week to name the Sochi as the venue for the 2014 winter games is being widely celebrated in Moscow as a triumph for Vladimir Putin and a recognition by the world community of Russia’s successful recovery.
But regardless of how true either of those propositions may be, the Sochi games, even though they are still seven years in the future, are already having an impact on the calculations of various groups concerning three critical ethno-national issues in Southern Russia and the Northern Caucasus.
In an essay posted online last Friday, Sergei Markedonov, one of Moscow’s most thoughtful commentators on the Caucasus, argues that the games themselves and the attention they inevitably attract will affect the Circassians, the Abkhazians, and Georgian-Russian ties (http://www.politcom.ru/print.php?id=4806).
First of all, Markedonov suggests, the games will highlight an issue to which the Circassian nationalities – the Adygei, the Kabardinians, the Cherkess, and the Shapsug – have long been seeking to attract attention: assigning responsibility for the expulsion of their forefathers from the Caucasus in the 19th century and securing redress for that act.
In the 1860s and 1870s, the tsarist authorities expelled more than a million Circassians to the Ottoman Empire, an action that Circassians in Russia and abroad insist was a genocide but that Moscow has consistently denied was anything of the sort. Now, the Circassians will have a broader stage on which to make their case.
Although Sochi today lies in an ethnic Russian region, its name and its history are Circassians, facts that the nearby Adygeis and the Circassians abroad are certain to make much of. At the very least, their campaign is likely to tie Moscow’s hands as far as folding Adygeia into the Russian region surrounding it until after 2014.
Second, because Sochi is located so close to Abkhazia, that longstanding “frozen conflict” will become more difficult to address in the run up to the games. Indeed, Markedonov says, for many in Moscow, "when we write Sochi, we have Abkhazia on our minds."
On the one hand, Moscow will be promoting the development of the broader Sochi area that includes Abkhazia, something that will do little to weaken secessionist sentiment there.
And on the other hand, the Moscow analyst argues, the Russian government will be reluctant to take any steps, including unilateral recognition or the use of force, that could undermine the positive and upbeat message about itself that Russian propagandists are already insisting upon.
Instead, Moscow will certainly want to project itself as a peacemaker, as a country interested in reducing tensions and solving problems rather than exacerbating them. But that may prove more difficult, Markedonov continues, than Moscow may currently assume.
And that leads to the third set of ethno-national issues that the Sochi Olympics are already affecting: relations between Moscow and Tbilisi. The Russian government can reasonably expect that the publicity around Sochi is likely to restrain the Georgian authorities from using force: After all, if Tbilisi did, the whole world would be watching.
At the same time, however, Moscow, -- which would clearly benefit for purposes of the games in having more cooperative relations with Georgia -- may find its hands tied as well: It could seek improved ties by sacrificing Abkhazia and South Osetia – but leaders in both might then act in ways neither Moscow nor Tbilisi would like.
And any retreat from Moscow’s forward leaning policy in these two “unrecognized” states would generate anger among Russian nationalists and imperialists who already believe that Putin has made too many concessions to others for his personal needs rather than for the national interests of the country.
But looming behind all of these ethnic situations is the deteriorating security situation across the entire northern Caucasus. As an article in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta” noted, Moscow is worried about the situation there because of rising crime and greater activism by rebel units (http://www.ng.ru/printed/80007).
Nonetheless, Putin can count on Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov to stay on message: Over the weekend, Kadyrov claimed there is no war in his republic and invited people from around the world to visit “the Chechen Switzerland” –those cities and towns where the post-Soviet wars were earlier most intense (http://www.segodnia.ru, July 7).
But in other remarks at the same time, Kadyrov advanced some demands that suggest he too may be counting on Sochi to affect Moscow’s calculations: He suggested that Chechnya must be allowed to retain more of its petroleum earnings and be helped to build its own refining capability as a step toward energy independence.
UPDATE ON JULY 11. Ethnic communities affected by the Sochi Olympics are already weighing in. A press spokesman for the Abkhaz president said in a Kreml.org commentary posted online yesterday that the Abkhaz are pleased that the games will be held near their territory (http://www.kreml.org/opinions/154572713?mode=print). But various social organizations in Adygeia have protested the decision, although government officials there say they support it (http://www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=12885).
UPDATE ON JULY 16. Ravza Ramazanova, the heaad of the Yasin Muslim Organization in Sochi has expresed the hope that media attention to her city will force the local officials to allow for the construction of a mosque for the city's 20,000 Muslims. She told Regions.ru today that her group has been seeking approval to build a mosque for 13 years without success (http://www.regions.ru/news/2086169/).
Monday, July 9, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Vladivostok Protesters Erect ‘Broken Wheel’ Monument to Bad Roads
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 9 – The deplorable state of roads in the Russian Far East sparked a protest in Vladivostok on Friday during which demonstrators blocked one of the many nearly impassible highways there but also to erect a mock monument consisting of a broken wheel to this achievement of their society.
The protest, which was organized by the Molodaya gvardiya organization there, quickly drew a crowd of supporters, who chanted that Russians “need normal roads! Roads along which one can go without fearing that the wheels of one’s car will fall off” (http://www.molgvardia.ru/vladivostok/daite_nam_dori_.print).
Everyone pays taxes to build and maintain highways, the demonstrators said, and consequently, “it is time that these funds be used as intended – to repair, repair and repair again” the highways rather than allowing them to fall into their current decayed state. Some among them said simply that “it is time to give us [good] roads!”
But very quickly the demonstration turned from being about the state of the highways to focusing on who is to blame for why the roads in Russia and especially in the Russian Far East are so bad. And not surprisingly, given the anti-government sentiments of Molodaya gvardiya, many pointed the finger of blame at the bureaucrats.
These officials “should be in jail,” some of the demonstrators insisted. And to get there, they should be driven there along the bumpy and pothole filled roads they have allowed to form. “Then, corruption will become less,” the protesters said, “and the roads will become much better.”
Such protests are interesting in three respects: First, they suggest that anger about real life experiences now can take the form of public protest, an indication that at least one aspect of civil society may be emerging in Russia in places far beyond the radar screen of Moscow observers.
Second, they highlight the ways in which such anger can quickly shift from being about concrete things to focusing on broader political questions, a pattern that may give ever more officials and politicians in the Russian Federation pause especially as the country moves into election season.
And third, such protests about highways call attention to a fundamental problem no one in Russia has found a way to address. On the one hand, Russia has fewer miles of paved roads relative to its size than any other country on earth. Consequently, it needs more roads and soon if its economy is to develop.
But at the same time, the existing roads are badly constructed – Russia has not changed the compression requirements for roadbeds since 1939 – constantly break apart, and require enormous expenditures just to keep them open, expenditures that are a major cash nexis between local governments and local business.
That opens the way to corruption and as the Vladivostok protest suggests to popular anger, something that Russian politicians may become more sensitive to at least for awhile as the country heads into elections later this year and especially in the spring of 2008.
Vienna, July 9 – The deplorable state of roads in the Russian Far East sparked a protest in Vladivostok on Friday during which demonstrators blocked one of the many nearly impassible highways there but also to erect a mock monument consisting of a broken wheel to this achievement of their society.
The protest, which was organized by the Molodaya gvardiya organization there, quickly drew a crowd of supporters, who chanted that Russians “need normal roads! Roads along which one can go without fearing that the wheels of one’s car will fall off” (http://www.molgvardia.ru/vladivostok/daite_nam_dori_.print).
Everyone pays taxes to build and maintain highways, the demonstrators said, and consequently, “it is time that these funds be used as intended – to repair, repair and repair again” the highways rather than allowing them to fall into their current decayed state. Some among them said simply that “it is time to give us [good] roads!”
But very quickly the demonstration turned from being about the state of the highways to focusing on who is to blame for why the roads in Russia and especially in the Russian Far East are so bad. And not surprisingly, given the anti-government sentiments of Molodaya gvardiya, many pointed the finger of blame at the bureaucrats.
These officials “should be in jail,” some of the demonstrators insisted. And to get there, they should be driven there along the bumpy and pothole filled roads they have allowed to form. “Then, corruption will become less,” the protesters said, “and the roads will become much better.”
Such protests are interesting in three respects: First, they suggest that anger about real life experiences now can take the form of public protest, an indication that at least one aspect of civil society may be emerging in Russia in places far beyond the radar screen of Moscow observers.
Second, they highlight the ways in which such anger can quickly shift from being about concrete things to focusing on broader political questions, a pattern that may give ever more officials and politicians in the Russian Federation pause especially as the country moves into election season.
And third, such protests about highways call attention to a fundamental problem no one in Russia has found a way to address. On the one hand, Russia has fewer miles of paved roads relative to its size than any other country on earth. Consequently, it needs more roads and soon if its economy is to develop.
But at the same time, the existing roads are badly constructed – Russia has not changed the compression requirements for roadbeds since 1939 – constantly break apart, and require enormous expenditures just to keep them open, expenditures that are a major cash nexis between local governments and local business.
That opens the way to corruption and as the Vladivostok protest suggests to popular anger, something that Russian politicians may become more sensitive to at least for awhile as the country heads into elections later this year and especially in the spring of 2008.
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