Paul Goble
Vienna, August 31 – Officials in St. Petersburg are overseeing the production of a “secret” map of the city’s ethnic neighborhoods nominally in order to block the emergence of ethnic ghettos that might spark violence in Russia’s northern capital much as such “ghettos” did in Paris two years ago.
But academic specialists on this subject say that the collection of ethnic data on residents now that the nationality line in passports has been abolished may have just the opposite effect, driving members of one ethnic group together as a means of defense against an overweening officialdom.
Yesterday’s “Delovaya Peterburg” carried an article entitled “A Ghetto: To Be or Not to Be” in which reporter Nina Astaf’yev described how officials have recruited scholars to gather data for an ethnic map of the city but assumed responsibility for assembling that data and drawing a map (http://narodru.ru/smi12548.html).
According to the scholars who are working on this project, officials hope that they will be able to use such an ethnic map of the city to decide where to commit resources to help integrate new arrivals, providing special schools and other city services tailed to the needs of the immigrants.
At present, there are only two neighborhoods in the city where housing prices are not so high as to prevent poorer immigrants from settling in any numbers, Astaf’yev said, Volosovskiy and Slantsevskiy districts. And consequently, new arrivals there may become “pioneers of social ghettoes which will then be transformed into ethnic ones.
But despite the professed goal of this project and precisely because the map itself has been classified as secret, some experts see this project as “the first step toward the ghetto-ization” of new arrivals rather than as a means of preventing the formation of self-contained districts whose residents have few ties with outsiders.
Dmitriy Dubrovskiy, who teachers at the European University in St. Petersburg, told the paper that he fears that the compilation of this map, as the process proceeds, will make immigrants to the city even more suspicious and thus ever more likely to seek support not from the city but rather from others of the same ethnic background.
If that happens, he continued, St. Petersburg will be continuing down a path many cities have followed, a path that at the very least is likely to be marked by occasional explosions like those which occurred in Paris and which the city fathers say they want to do everything to prevent.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Muscovites Said to View Migrants as ‘Societal,’ Not Economic Threat
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 30 – “Behind a façade of harmony,” ethnic relations in the city of Moscow are deteriorating because native Muscovites, who are overwhelmingly ethnic Russians, view newly arrived immigrants, who are from the Caucasus and Central Asia, as a “societal” threat, according to a new survey of ethnographic research there.
In a heavily footnoted study, V.G. Stel’makh, a senior researcher at Culture Ministry’s Institute of Cultural Studies, discusses how Muscovites differ from other Russians on this point and how officials should help to narrow the divide between Russians and non-Russians there (http://www.islamrf.ru/articles.php?razdel=1&sid=809).
In many Russian cities, migrants are generating xenophobic attitudes because they compete for a limited number of jobs. But in Moscow, this is much less of a problem for most Russians, and that is reflected in the failure to radicals to mobilize people, in polls and in the support various non-Russian groups receive from the city government.
But while all that is the case, he continues, there are three major reasons for concern. First, in Moscow, there is a huge difference between non-Russian groups whose members arrived long ago and who have adapted to Russian cultural patterns and the more recent waves of new arrivals who have not.
Second, the non-Russian organizations to which the Moscow city authorities have given support, backing that has led many people to conclude that ethnic relations in Moscow are fine, tend to be dominated by non-Russians who have been in the city for a long time and who have been acculturated.
And third, while Muscovites do not express extreme nationalist views to pollsters, they do in far larger percentages than do those in other Russian cities react with horror or anger at the behavior of new arrivals, viewing them as threats to their “societal” arrangements and as potential rioters on the model of Muslims in Paris in the fall of 2005.
Indeed, Sel’makkh points out, polls have repeatedly shown that nearly four out of five Muscovites “sincerely believe in the possibility” that disorders like those which occurred in the French capital two years ago could very easily take place in their own city sometime soon.
Taking all this into consideration, Stel’makh says, it is possible to say that “the nationality question” as it has typically been understood has retreated “to the periphery of mass consciousness.” But while that is the case, “xenophobia has become a systemic factor of life in the capital city.”
And he suggests that this xenophobia represents a threat to civil peace because, as various studies have shown, that means ethnic and religious relations could explode, with violent clashes set off by unpredictable, unexpected and in themselves quite minor incidents.
Both Russian Federation and Moscow city officials are aware of this danger, he suggests. But to date, they have thought they can best address it by talking up tolerance and bringing together representatives of Russian and non-Russian communities to build bridges between the two.
Such efforts are noble, Stel’makh says, but in and of themselves, they are doomed to fail. On the one hand, the ethnic Russian community is not well-organized and thus is not effectively represented at such meetings. And on the other, the non-Russians there are the wrong ones – acculturated longtime residents rather than new arrivals.
Consequently, while Stel’makh does not call for an end to such measures, he does suggest that overcoming the current divide between Russian Muscovites and non-Russian new arrivals will require the development of a broader based civil society, one in which all relevant groups organize themselves rather than be organized by the state.
Given how difficult it is likely to be for such a self-organizing civil society to emerge in Moscow, Stel’makh’s analysis suggests that the near and medium term prospects for ethnic peace in the Russian capital are far less good than a first glance at the situation there might suggest.
Vienna, August 30 – “Behind a façade of harmony,” ethnic relations in the city of Moscow are deteriorating because native Muscovites, who are overwhelmingly ethnic Russians, view newly arrived immigrants, who are from the Caucasus and Central Asia, as a “societal” threat, according to a new survey of ethnographic research there.
In a heavily footnoted study, V.G. Stel’makh, a senior researcher at Culture Ministry’s Institute of Cultural Studies, discusses how Muscovites differ from other Russians on this point and how officials should help to narrow the divide between Russians and non-Russians there (http://www.islamrf.ru/articles.php?razdel=1&sid=809).
In many Russian cities, migrants are generating xenophobic attitudes because they compete for a limited number of jobs. But in Moscow, this is much less of a problem for most Russians, and that is reflected in the failure to radicals to mobilize people, in polls and in the support various non-Russian groups receive from the city government.
But while all that is the case, he continues, there are three major reasons for concern. First, in Moscow, there is a huge difference between non-Russian groups whose members arrived long ago and who have adapted to Russian cultural patterns and the more recent waves of new arrivals who have not.
Second, the non-Russian organizations to which the Moscow city authorities have given support, backing that has led many people to conclude that ethnic relations in Moscow are fine, tend to be dominated by non-Russians who have been in the city for a long time and who have been acculturated.
And third, while Muscovites do not express extreme nationalist views to pollsters, they do in far larger percentages than do those in other Russian cities react with horror or anger at the behavior of new arrivals, viewing them as threats to their “societal” arrangements and as potential rioters on the model of Muslims in Paris in the fall of 2005.
Indeed, Sel’makkh points out, polls have repeatedly shown that nearly four out of five Muscovites “sincerely believe in the possibility” that disorders like those which occurred in the French capital two years ago could very easily take place in their own city sometime soon.
Taking all this into consideration, Stel’makh says, it is possible to say that “the nationality question” as it has typically been understood has retreated “to the periphery of mass consciousness.” But while that is the case, “xenophobia has become a systemic factor of life in the capital city.”
And he suggests that this xenophobia represents a threat to civil peace because, as various studies have shown, that means ethnic and religious relations could explode, with violent clashes set off by unpredictable, unexpected and in themselves quite minor incidents.
Both Russian Federation and Moscow city officials are aware of this danger, he suggests. But to date, they have thought they can best address it by talking up tolerance and bringing together representatives of Russian and non-Russian communities to build bridges between the two.
Such efforts are noble, Stel’makh says, but in and of themselves, they are doomed to fail. On the one hand, the ethnic Russian community is not well-organized and thus is not effectively represented at such meetings. And on the other, the non-Russians there are the wrong ones – acculturated longtime residents rather than new arrivals.
Consequently, while Stel’makh does not call for an end to such measures, he does suggest that overcoming the current divide between Russian Muscovites and non-Russian new arrivals will require the development of a broader based civil society, one in which all relevant groups organize themselves rather than be organized by the state.
Given how difficult it is likely to be for such a self-organizing civil society to emerge in Moscow, Stel’makh’s analysis suggests that the near and medium term prospects for ethnic peace in the Russian capital are far less good than a first glance at the situation there might suggest.
Window on Eurasia: Russian Media Focus on Religion, Nationality Up Radically since 2000
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 30 – Russian newspapers carried more than 16 times as many articles on religious and nationality issues in 2006 than they did in 1999, according to monitoring conducted by Russia’s Ministry of Regional Development – a rise that is all the more dramatic because the number of news outets may have fallen over that period.
These results were reported by Aleksandr Zhuravskiy, the director of that ministry’s Department of International Relations to a September 2006 conference in Nizhniy Novgorod that was jointly sponsored by the ministry, the Inter-Religious Council of Russia and the Council of Europe.
That speech was published in a low tirage book, “The Government’s Nationality Policy and Government-Religious Relations in the Russian Federation” (in Russian, Moscow: Prospekt, 2006), and an updated version has now been posted online by the Peoples of Russia website (http://narodru.ru/article12500).
The basic data set on “The Number of Publications in Federal and Regional Media on Inter-Ethnic and State-Confessional Relations (1996-2006)” are presented below:
Col. I: Interethnic relations, tolerance, ethnopolitical extremism, xenophobia, and nationalism
Col. II: Terrorism
Col. III: Religion, Inter-religious relations, religious extremism
Year
1996 10288 6108 17175
1997 12787 7043 29055
1998 18091 9495 38790
1999 33783 28732 59776
2000 41590 39043 91098
2001 51713 96765 122578
2002 66333 127795 132651
2003 67596 106621 170671
2004 95081 174265 218472
2005 109435 141042 255659
2006 141812 114001 274486
Note: The figures for 2006 are for the first 11.5 monthly only.
There are many intriguing aspects to this data set, but three are especially important. First, this explosion in media coverage almost certainly guarantees that many Russians are paying more attention to these issues than they otherwise would, a fact that should be taken into consideration in analyzing reports about Russian attitudes.
Second, while the number of articles about terrorism has fallen over the last several years, the number about religion and ethnicty has continued to climb: In 2002, there were fewer than 5,000 more articles about religious issues than there were about terrorism, but now there are almost 2.5 times as many.
And third, there has been an explosive growth in the number of articles about various aspects of “the nationality question” over the last four years, with their number more than doubling over a period which saw the number of those on terrorism rise significantly only to fall off to roughly the same number as at the start of that period.
Vienna, August 30 – Russian newspapers carried more than 16 times as many articles on religious and nationality issues in 2006 than they did in 1999, according to monitoring conducted by Russia’s Ministry of Regional Development – a rise that is all the more dramatic because the number of news outets may have fallen over that period.
These results were reported by Aleksandr Zhuravskiy, the director of that ministry’s Department of International Relations to a September 2006 conference in Nizhniy Novgorod that was jointly sponsored by the ministry, the Inter-Religious Council of Russia and the Council of Europe.
That speech was published in a low tirage book, “The Government’s Nationality Policy and Government-Religious Relations in the Russian Federation” (in Russian, Moscow: Prospekt, 2006), and an updated version has now been posted online by the Peoples of Russia website (http://narodru.ru/article12500).
The basic data set on “The Number of Publications in Federal and Regional Media on Inter-Ethnic and State-Confessional Relations (1996-2006)” are presented below:
Col. I: Interethnic relations, tolerance, ethnopolitical extremism, xenophobia, and nationalism
Col. II: Terrorism
Col. III: Religion, Inter-religious relations, religious extremism
Year
1996 10288 6108 17175
1997 12787 7043 29055
1998 18091 9495 38790
1999 33783 28732 59776
2000 41590 39043 91098
2001 51713 96765 122578
2002 66333 127795 132651
2003 67596 106621 170671
2004 95081 174265 218472
2005 109435 141042 255659
2006 141812 114001 274486
Note: The figures for 2006 are for the first 11.5 monthly only.
There are many intriguing aspects to this data set, but three are especially important. First, this explosion in media coverage almost certainly guarantees that many Russians are paying more attention to these issues than they otherwise would, a fact that should be taken into consideration in analyzing reports about Russian attitudes.
Second, while the number of articles about terrorism has fallen over the last several years, the number about religion and ethnicty has continued to climb: In 2002, there were fewer than 5,000 more articles about religious issues than there were about terrorism, but now there are almost 2.5 times as many.
And third, there has been an explosive growth in the number of articles about various aspects of “the nationality question” over the last four years, with their number more than doubling over a period which saw the number of those on terrorism rise significantly only to fall off to roughly the same number as at the start of that period.
Window on Eurasia: Chechnya’s Kadyrov Seeks Legitimation in Islam
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 29 – By playing up his ties to the Islamic traditions of his native republic, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov is seeking to legitimize himself, broaden his political base, and thus give himself greater freedom of action both within Chechnya and vis-à-vis Moscow.
His recent travels to the Middle East, his pretensions to serve as a spokesman and defender for Chechens and Muslims throughout the Russian Federation, and now this week his decision to provide state financing for an Islamic academy in Grozniy are all part of this effort.
And while many Moscow commentators have suggested that Kadyrov is not surprisingly taking these steps now to provide himself with a political base not dependent on Russian President Vladimir Putin, some are expressing concerns about what Kadyrov’s approach will mean not only in Chechnya but elsewhere as well.
More intriguingly, Kadyrov’s rapprochement with Islam has led several Russian commentators to examine the kind of Islam Kadyrov is seeking to use in this effort and to ask whether that Islam, which Kadyrov argues is not anti-Russian, is in fact completely at odds with the Islamic radicalism, which is.
One of the most thoughtful discussions yet to appear on these issues is to be found in today’s “Vremya Novostei” (http://www.vremya.ru/2007/155/4/185754.html). In it, Ivan Sukhov directly addresses the question of Kadyrov’s legitimation and explores the various kinds of Islam, traditionalist and radical, now found in Chechnya.
Sukhov begins with two fundamental observations. On the one hand, he says, “for a long time, Mr. Putin was the single source of Kadyrov’s legitimacy.” And now that Putin’s term is coming to an end, Kadyrov has little choice but to try to find an alternative source of legitimation if he is to survive on more than brute force.
On the other hand, the commentator observes, Islam, which was only a marginal element in Chechnya’s political life in the early 1990s, is now central to all questions of power there, in large part because of the appearance of fundamentalists from abroad and the role of Kadyrov’s father, Akhmat, the mufti of Chechnya-Ichkeria.
Almost a decade ago, Mufti Kadyrov said that “in his understanding, happiness for Chechnya was living free of foreign preachers for 100 years.” And he called on former pro-independence field commanders to join in “an armed struggle against ‘alien fundamentalism.’”
That served as the basis for Kadyrov senior’s own rise to the Chechen presidency, Surkov suggests, and also – and perhaps more important --as a justification for those in Moscow who hoped to be able to “place responsibility for everything taking place in Chechnya on the Chechens themselves.”
Both Akmat Kadyrov and his son, Ramzan, are declared followers of the Qadiria order of Sufi Islam. That tarikat, which views Salafi Islam as a dangerous threat, follows the teachers of a nineteenth century sheikh Kunta-Haji Kishiyev, who urged his followers to focus on internal perfection rather than violent resistance to outside forces.
While most Western commentators tend to lump together all Sufi groups in the northern Caucasus, in fact, they often are at odds, Surkov points out. Indeed, he says, one of the reasons that Alu Alkhanov was ousted as president was because he belonged to the Naqshbandi sufi tarikat.
The two tarikats – Qadiria and Naqshbandi -- formed an unwritten alliance after the defeat of Shamil in the nineteenth century, but during the Russian civil war, the Naqshbandi tarikat came to be viewed by the Soviet authorities as the more reliable. And they backed it in a variety of ways against the Qadiria.
Now, however, the Qadiria tarikat is the dominant player in Grozniy, Sukhov says, although there is some evidence that the two may come together against in a “consortium” – the term belongs to Said-Emin Dzhabrailov, speaker of Chechnya’s Public Chamber – to fight the Salafi.
Such an arrangement, Sukhov argues, has led some in Moscow to conclude that what Kadyrov junior is doing is exactly in Moscow’s interests. But the “Vremya novostei” writer warns that there are good reasons to fear that such a conclusion, however justified in the short term, may prove wrong sometime in the future.
The very fact that Muslim groups at odds at one point can form alliances at another means, he says, that “one ought not to forget that the border between so called ‘pure’ and ‘traditional’ Islam frequently turns out to dissolve.” Should that happen, Russia could face a bigger problem in Chechnya than any it has had there in the past.
Vienna, August 29 – By playing up his ties to the Islamic traditions of his native republic, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov is seeking to legitimize himself, broaden his political base, and thus give himself greater freedom of action both within Chechnya and vis-à-vis Moscow.
His recent travels to the Middle East, his pretensions to serve as a spokesman and defender for Chechens and Muslims throughout the Russian Federation, and now this week his decision to provide state financing for an Islamic academy in Grozniy are all part of this effort.
And while many Moscow commentators have suggested that Kadyrov is not surprisingly taking these steps now to provide himself with a political base not dependent on Russian President Vladimir Putin, some are expressing concerns about what Kadyrov’s approach will mean not only in Chechnya but elsewhere as well.
More intriguingly, Kadyrov’s rapprochement with Islam has led several Russian commentators to examine the kind of Islam Kadyrov is seeking to use in this effort and to ask whether that Islam, which Kadyrov argues is not anti-Russian, is in fact completely at odds with the Islamic radicalism, which is.
One of the most thoughtful discussions yet to appear on these issues is to be found in today’s “Vremya Novostei” (http://www.vremya.ru/2007/155/4/185754.html). In it, Ivan Sukhov directly addresses the question of Kadyrov’s legitimation and explores the various kinds of Islam, traditionalist and radical, now found in Chechnya.
Sukhov begins with two fundamental observations. On the one hand, he says, “for a long time, Mr. Putin was the single source of Kadyrov’s legitimacy.” And now that Putin’s term is coming to an end, Kadyrov has little choice but to try to find an alternative source of legitimation if he is to survive on more than brute force.
On the other hand, the commentator observes, Islam, which was only a marginal element in Chechnya’s political life in the early 1990s, is now central to all questions of power there, in large part because of the appearance of fundamentalists from abroad and the role of Kadyrov’s father, Akhmat, the mufti of Chechnya-Ichkeria.
Almost a decade ago, Mufti Kadyrov said that “in his understanding, happiness for Chechnya was living free of foreign preachers for 100 years.” And he called on former pro-independence field commanders to join in “an armed struggle against ‘alien fundamentalism.’”
That served as the basis for Kadyrov senior’s own rise to the Chechen presidency, Surkov suggests, and also – and perhaps more important --as a justification for those in Moscow who hoped to be able to “place responsibility for everything taking place in Chechnya on the Chechens themselves.”
Both Akmat Kadyrov and his son, Ramzan, are declared followers of the Qadiria order of Sufi Islam. That tarikat, which views Salafi Islam as a dangerous threat, follows the teachers of a nineteenth century sheikh Kunta-Haji Kishiyev, who urged his followers to focus on internal perfection rather than violent resistance to outside forces.
While most Western commentators tend to lump together all Sufi groups in the northern Caucasus, in fact, they often are at odds, Surkov points out. Indeed, he says, one of the reasons that Alu Alkhanov was ousted as president was because he belonged to the Naqshbandi sufi tarikat.
The two tarikats – Qadiria and Naqshbandi -- formed an unwritten alliance after the defeat of Shamil in the nineteenth century, but during the Russian civil war, the Naqshbandi tarikat came to be viewed by the Soviet authorities as the more reliable. And they backed it in a variety of ways against the Qadiria.
Now, however, the Qadiria tarikat is the dominant player in Grozniy, Sukhov says, although there is some evidence that the two may come together against in a “consortium” – the term belongs to Said-Emin Dzhabrailov, speaker of Chechnya’s Public Chamber – to fight the Salafi.
Such an arrangement, Sukhov argues, has led some in Moscow to conclude that what Kadyrov junior is doing is exactly in Moscow’s interests. But the “Vremya novostei” writer warns that there are good reasons to fear that such a conclusion, however justified in the short term, may prove wrong sometime in the future.
The very fact that Muslim groups at odds at one point can form alliances at another means, he says, that “one ought not to forget that the border between so called ‘pure’ and ‘traditional’ Islam frequently turns out to dissolve.” Should that happen, Russia could face a bigger problem in Chechnya than any it has had there in the past.
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