Window on Eurasia: Ingush No Longer Feel Part of Russia, Duma Deputy Tells Putin

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 24 – The people of Ingushetia no longer feel themselves to be part of Russia because they believe Moscow has neglected them and is prepared to accept pleasant-sounding lies from local officials about their situation, according to the deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Nationality Affairs.
In an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bashir Kodzoyev outlines what he describes as “the profound political and economic crisis” now wracking Ingushetia as well as what he sees as the delusions of federal officials about what is occurring there (http://www.islam.ru/pressclub/tema/inhoke).
Some of Kodzoyev’s complaints will be familiar to anyone who has been following the demonstrations, violence and arrests, false or otherwise, in that North Caucasus republic. But his public enumeration of them creates a devastating picture of a republic now out of control.
First, he says, the wave of kidnappings and disappearances that has swept Ingushetia in the last months has highlighted the fact that “our law enforcement and other executive branch agencies clearly do not want or are afraid to see [these things] as violations of law and human rights.”
Indeed, he says, “the impression has been created that the federal center is more pleased by false but brave speeches than by real facts.”
Second, Kodzoyev points to the functional collapse of the Ingushetian bureaucracy. According to his figures, the authorities in Ingushetia have not been paying the local police on a regular basis, and the latter are now owed billions of rubles.
Third, Kodzoyev notes, neither the local authorities nor federal officials have fulfilled their promises to address the problems of refugees in the republic. Fourth, neither have done much of anything to help the Ingush out of the deep economic depression they have found themselves in.
And fifth, he writes, corruption in Ingushetia is massive and continuing, running into the hundreds of millions of rubles every year since at least 2004 – and this despite his complaints and those of others knowledgeable about the situation in the republic to federal accounting and justice officials.
Kodzoyev’s charges and his suggestions that the Ingush are becoming ever more angry not only at their own republic government but also at Moscow are reinforced by two other articles that have appeared online in recent days.
In the first, Yuri Soshin of the Russian nationalist site Pravaya.ru describes what he calls “de-russification Ingush style.” Not only have the numbers of ethnic Russians fallen dramatically in Ingushetia since 1991 – from some 50,000 then to about 2500 now – the attitudes of the Ingush toward them have changed as well.
Because of the efforts of Islamist groups and the failure of the Ingush authorities to counter them, Soshin suggests, “anti-Russian and anti-Osetin attitudes are characteristic even for the pro-Russia part of society,” because the remaining “orientation toward Russia” reflects a desire for peace, quiet and personal economic well-being.”
But because the Russian and Ingush authorities have failed to act, he continues, the 40 percent of Ingush who were anti-Moscow at the end of the Soviet period have certainly become more numerous, while the 60 percent pro-Moscow Ingush then are certainly fewer (http://www.pravay.ru/look/13574).
And in the second of these articles, Orkhan Dzhemal, deputy editor of the journal “Smysl’,” argues that the failure of Moscow to develop an indigenous Ingush police form and the center’s willingness to rely on ethnic Russians and ethnic Osetins to try to control the situation is helping to destabilize things perhaps to the point of no return.
More significant still, he says, is the fact that “the Ingush situation shows that the involvement of federal forces does not provide a guarantee of the observation of any legal norms,” thus providing additional ammunition for Islamist radicals who argue that only Islamic norms can correct the situation.
In recent months, Dzhemal continues, “one ought not to say that the Chechens have begun to relate more positively toward Russians, but [at least] they have not become more negative” about either Moscow as a center of power or ethnic Russians as a core community of the state (http://www.islamcom.ru/material.php?id=485).
“But in Ingushetia, were the local people were until recently relatively positively inclined toward Russians, anti-Russian attitudes have begun to arise,” a development which makes the resolution of all issues, from the Osetin-Ingush clashes to those between Ingushetia and Moscow, far more difficult and problematic.

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One writer, however, has a very different take: Stanislav Koval’ski suggests that Ingushetia is “an FSB special operation” and thus represents “a replay of ‘Black September 1999,’” a reference to the Moscow apartment bombings Putin exploited to “crack the whip” and win support (http://www.wek.ru/articles/prois/224854/index.shtml).

Window on Eurasia: Three Disturbing Developments

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 24 –Russian news reports over the weekend that terrorist actions are not being counted as crimes in Ingushetia, that theaters are to be censored in Chechnya, and that Moscow plans to homogenize school programs in the country’s regions are three disturbing developments that as yet have attracted relatively little notice.
Not Counting Terror as a Crime. Yesterday, Ingushetia.ru reported that Ingush interior minister Musa Medov has given oral instructions to his officers not to classify terrorist incidents in which Russian forces are involved as crimes, part of a general effort by republic President Murat Zyazikov to control reporting about developments there.
In reporting this, the web portal said that “it is possible” that this policy of not reporting “information about crimes in the current circumstances is correct” because such reports do have the effect of “increasing tensions” in an already unstable situation (http://www.ingushetiya.ru/news/print.html?id=11765).
But, the portal continued, “if a crime is not registered, then no investigation of it will be carried out and those responsible will not be identified.” Moreover, it noted, “where there is no information, there will be many rumors which will spread rapidly, lead to exaggerations about what has occurred, and prompt more “massive” public protests.
Censoring Theaters. Also yesterday, the Kavkaz.memo.ru portal reported that the Chechen republic’s culture ministry has promulgated new rules for Chechen artists: “from now on, all performers there must do so in ways that correspond to “a Chechen mentality and upbringing” (http://www.kavkaz.meo.ru/printnews/news/id/1197747.html).
Such a decree opens the way to a chilling form of censorship, as a similar ruling in neighboring Daghestan last spring shows. There, the local pro-government imams published a list of stars of stage and screen who, the religious leaders said, were persona non grata because their acts violate the cultural norms of that republic.
And Eliminating the Regional Component in Education. Then yesterday, picking up on an Interfax report, the religious news portal FOMA reported that a group of members of the Russian Federation Social Chamber have written to President Vladimir Putin complaining about a bill that would eliminate regional variations in the schools.
According to the letter, “the draft would deprive regions and schools of the right to include in academic programs locally specific courses, corresponding to the social and educational needs of the population of the subjects of Russia and considering regional and local differences” (http://www.foma.ru/news/2163/?print_version=1).
Up to now, the writers point out, both regions with an ethnic Russian majority and the national republics have been able to adapt their schools curricula by including special language instruction, courses on ethnic history and culture, and even courses on the history of religions.
The new draft, clearly aimed at preventing the introduction of religious instruction anywhere after President Vladimir Putin announced last week that he was against it, would certainly do that, and this may explain why the government has put this draft forward, confident that both United Russia and most human rights groups will support it.
But as the authors note, this legislation, if passed, would do far more than that. On the one hand, it would reduce to a minimum any local involvement in deciding what the schools can and should teach. And on the other, it would put at risk the existing curricula in all non-Russian schools.
Such an attack “on the national-cultural rights of the peoples of Russia,” the authors of the letter say, “violates the Constitution of the Russian Federation [and] contradicts the principles and norms of international law and the international treaty obligations of the Russian Federation.
And as a result, the authors of this open letter insist, the draft bill could if adopted without significant changes have the effect of “generating inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts in Russia and [even] destabilizing federal relations” between Moscow and the regions.

Window on Eurasia: ‘Russia Has Only 50 Years Left,’ Kurayev Tells Ukrainians

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 24 – “Russia has only 50 years left of its historical existence,” Orthodox Deacon Andrei Kurayev told a group of Ukrainian academic and religious figures in Lviv last week, noting that “a country in which young men do not want to go in the army and young women to give birth is doomed.”
Kurayev, a controversial Russian Orthodox publicist who teaches at the Moscow Theological Academy, made these at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Western Ukraine last Wednesday (http://www.risu.org.ua/rus/news/article;17905/8). And because this danger is so great, he continued, Russia’s only choice now is “Orthodoxy or death.”
In other comments, he said that Ukraine could only have a future if it does not join the European Union. Were Kyiv to do so, Kurayev continued, this would be “death for Ukraine.” And he stressed that the Moscow Patriarchate always has “softer” relations with the Roman Catholic Church than it does with the Uniates.
The Ukrainian news service did not give any details on the reaction of his listeners, but now that Moscow’s Portal-Credo.ru site has picked up the RISU report (see http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=news&id=56980), it is likely that both Ukrainian and Russian writers will criticize what Kurayev has said on this occasion.