Paul Goble
Vienna, September 4 – On the first anniversary of the clashes between ethnic Russians and Chechens in Russia’s north, a Moscow commentator has suggested that Kondopoga has become “a code word” for the danger of countrywide ethnic clashes that were they to break out could lead to the murder-suicide for Russian society.
But precisely because this risk was so quickly recognized both by the government and most members of Russian society, Dmitriy Nersesov writes in a commentary posted online yesterday, the tragic clashes in Kondopoga may turn out to be “a saving vaccination” (http://www.russ.ru/layout.ru/set/print//politics/lyudi/ieroglif_kondopoga).
After attention to Kondopoga ebbed at the end of last year, the conflict in that Karelian city has once again become the subject of a flood of commentaries in the Russian press, not only because of the anniversary this week but also because of the trials last month of some of the participants.
But Nersesov writes that for him and obviously for many others, “Kondopoga became that place where Russian society could look directly at its own death and even touch it with its hands. For what happened there was in essence a rehearsal for a new Russian-Caucasus war” but with one essential difference.
Unlike the war in Chechnya and the continuing turmoil in southern regions of the Russian Federation, this conflict was not “confined to the North Caucasus but would break out across the entire country” even and perhaps especially in places where people from the Caucasus are new arrivals.
Indeed, the conflict between ethnic Russians and Chechens in Kondopoga at the end of August last year happened precisely because neither officials nor the population had much experience with interethnic relations and were driven by images of “the other” rather than by any concrete experience with him.
Kondopoga showed, Nersesov continues, that members of both groups have accepted these images and are now prepared to act on them in ways. And that new development, he suggests, points to “the reality of the risk of the unleashing of a total ‘anti-Caucasian’ civil war.”
In that war, he warns, “Russia would not survive.”
Nersesov concludes his essay by arguing that “it is not so important” whether this scenario is being sponsored by some outside force or is arising “’by a natural path.” What does matter, he says, is that all the residents of Russia have now “looked into the abyss” and stopped before “stepping into it.”
And to the extent that Russians continue to act with restraint, to pull back from this kind of violence in the future, the Moscow writer says “hopefully,” the violence in Kondopoga will have been a frightening but ultimately “a vaccination” that will save the entire country.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Russians Mark 75th Anniversary of Pavlik Morozov’s Killing
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 4 – The anniversaries of Beslan, Khasavyurt and Kondopoga have attracted more attention this year, but as in the past, a small group of Russians met on Sunday to commemorate Pavlik Morozov, the young man killed by his relatives after turning in his parents during collectivization on September 3, 1932.
In Soviet times, communist officials held up Morozov as a model Soviet citizen, more committed to serving the communist system that protecting his own family. More recently, religious and other anti-communist groups have denounced his actions as a symbol of all that was wrong with the Soviet past.
But the organizers of this year’s commemoration sought to chart a middle course. Nina Kupratsevich, the director of the Pavlik Morozov Museum in the village of Gerasimovka, said that her focus was on “a tragedy” in which “the children [Morozov’s brother was also killed] were not guilty” (http://www.nr2.ru/ekb/137680.html).
According to the news agency account, the graves of Morozov and his brother were covered with flowers on this, the 75th anniversary, giving some support for Kupratsevich’s claim that memories of Pavlik Morozov remain very much alive not only in his native village but “throughout Sverdlovsk oblast.”
She added that she or other curators in the region did not support proposals to change the name of the museum she oversees to the museum of collectivization because “the name of Pavlik Morozov generates much greater interest among people than does collectivization.”
At the same time, she continued, she and her fellow museum workers go out of their way in their meetings with visitors not only to talk about “the tragedy of Pavlik Morozov” but also about the broader destruction of the countryside in his region during collectivization.
Indeed, she said, one of the major projects of the Pavlik Morozov Museum now is to gather genealogical information on all the residents of the region who were connected in one way or another with the history of the peasantry there and its fate during Stalin’s collectivization drive.
But despite this attention, this museum faces an uncertain future: Its location far from major urban areas makes it difficult for many to visit the site, and the museum’s longstanding efforts to raise money for its own bus to bring people in so far have come up short.
Vienna, September 4 – The anniversaries of Beslan, Khasavyurt and Kondopoga have attracted more attention this year, but as in the past, a small group of Russians met on Sunday to commemorate Pavlik Morozov, the young man killed by his relatives after turning in his parents during collectivization on September 3, 1932.
In Soviet times, communist officials held up Morozov as a model Soviet citizen, more committed to serving the communist system that protecting his own family. More recently, religious and other anti-communist groups have denounced his actions as a symbol of all that was wrong with the Soviet past.
But the organizers of this year’s commemoration sought to chart a middle course. Nina Kupratsevich, the director of the Pavlik Morozov Museum in the village of Gerasimovka, said that her focus was on “a tragedy” in which “the children [Morozov’s brother was also killed] were not guilty” (http://www.nr2.ru/ekb/137680.html).
According to the news agency account, the graves of Morozov and his brother were covered with flowers on this, the 75th anniversary, giving some support for Kupratsevich’s claim that memories of Pavlik Morozov remain very much alive not only in his native village but “throughout Sverdlovsk oblast.”
She added that she or other curators in the region did not support proposals to change the name of the museum she oversees to the museum of collectivization because “the name of Pavlik Morozov generates much greater interest among people than does collectivization.”
At the same time, she continued, she and her fellow museum workers go out of their way in their meetings with visitors not only to talk about “the tragedy of Pavlik Morozov” but also about the broader destruction of the countryside in his region during collectivization.
Indeed, she said, one of the major projects of the Pavlik Morozov Museum now is to gather genealogical information on all the residents of the region who were connected in one way or another with the history of the peasantry there and its fate during Stalin’s collectivization drive.
But despite this attention, this museum faces an uncertain future: Its location far from major urban areas makes it difficult for many to visit the site, and the museum’s longstanding efforts to raise money for its own bus to bring people in so far have come up short.
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