Paul Goble
Vienna, October 15 – Confronted with what commanders see as a disastrous demographic situation, the Russian defense ministry has been manipulating this fall’s draft in an effort to secure a more ethnically Russian and less culturally Muslim military, according to an analysis published in a Moscow newspaper today.
The declining number of men in the prime draft-age cohort in Russia and the rising share that members of Muslim nationalities form among their number has confronted the Russian military with several unattractive options, according to Vladimir Mukhin in NG-Regiony (http://www.ng.ru/ngregions/2007-10-15/13_prizyv.html).
If the armed services rely more heavily on professional soldiers rather than draftees, that will put additional strains on the Russian military budget. If the army drafts more ethnic Russians, it will likely harm the economy by removing from the workforce some of the most qualified professionals.
But if the army drafts men in equal proportions across the Russian Federation, Mukhin writes, then the military will increasingly consist of men from historically Muslim nationalities, something that commanders fear could undermine discipline among those in uniform.
According to Mukhin, are convinced that “a large stratum of Orthodox Slavs in the army guarantees stability, excludes the threat of terrorist actions and other extremist phenomena, and also reduces the probability of inter-ethnic and inter-confessional conflicts among the soldiery.”
Consequently, although they are loathe to say anything about it given the sensitivity of ethnic relations, officials responsible for drafting men into the military and other security agencies are carefully but quietly reducing draft quotas for what they call “socially unfavorable regions” like Daghestan Chechnya and Ingushetia.
But because it is precisely these historically Islamic regions have relatively larger pools of potential draftees, this effort has the effect of allowing more “ethnic Muslims” to escape military service while forcing a higher percentage of ethnic Russians to don a uniform.
In the past, officials responsible for the draft did not need to do this. While Muslim nationalities were growing faster than the ethnic Russians, the difference in numbers was not so great that, after members of the former were rejected on medical grounds, that this difference had a major effect.
But now, not only are young Russians now more likely to be medically unfit than they were earlier, as numerous articles attest, but the difference between historically Russian regions and historically Islamic ones as a source of draftees in the Russian military is staggering and potentially explosive.
Mukhin notes that this year, the draft age cohort in Chechnya is approximately equal to that of all the predominantly ethnic Russian federation subjects in the Leningrad military district. But no one in the Russian military would be pleased were the two areas to yield the same number of draftees.
Consequently, the “NG-Regiony” journalist continues, the Russian Federation General Staff has “artificially carried out draft measures which increase” the number of ethnic Russian draftees relative to the number of ethnic Muslim ones by expanding quotas in areas where the former predominate and reducing them where the latter live.
So far, the military’s tilt to ethnic Russians against ethnic Muslims has not been the subject of much discussion in the media, but some ethnic Russians -- including activists in groups like the Soldiers’ Mothers Committees -- are beginning to notice that their sons have a greater chance of being called up than do the sons of Muslims.
In the future, this trend could become even more pronounced, if current demographic trends continue and if the Russian military continues its current set of preferences. The first is virtually a certainty, and the second is almost as likely given the statements of many senior commanders and their links to the Russian Orthodox Church.
According to Kommersant-Vlast’, today, declines in the number of men in the draft age cohort and the simultaneous increase in the share ethnic Muslims form within it are set to increase over the next decade of more, further reducing Moscow’s options and sparking new tensions (http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=814617).
The article notes that Russian statistics show that the numbers of people in the workforce in Russia for the first time began to fall this year after gradually rising even during the difficult years of the 1990s because of the Russian Federation’s complicated age structure.
But this year, the decline was only a miniscule 300,000. Next year, according to an estimate prepared by the Moscow Center of Demography and Human Ecology, the decline will be more than twice that, and by 2010, it will exceed 1.2 million each year, a figure that will continue until at least 2020.
This trend, the article suggests, “cannot but have an impact on the Russian economy” and on the Russian military but is one that current Russian policymakers, however much they try and talk, can do little or nothing about because those involved have already been born.
And officials cannot soon have much effect on the changing ethnic mix, given the higher birthrates among Muslims than among ethnic Russians. As the article notes, the ten regions with the highest birthrates per 1,000 are all non-Russian, with most being Muslim, while nine of the ten with the lowest are predominantly ethnic Russian.
Neither ethnic Russians nor ethnic Muslims are likely to remain entirely comfortable with a situation in which Moscow keeps the Russian Federation’s military and security services ethnically Russian just as demographic forces make that country’s population ever less so.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Window on Eurasia: More Russians See Class Divisions as ‘Very Sharp’ than Say Ethnic and Religious Ones Are, Poll Suggests
Paul Goble
Vienna, October 15 – Fifty percent of Russians say that “contradictions” between rich and power are now “very sharp” in their home areas -- more than twice the share of those who say the same about relations between ethnic Russians and non-Russians, longtime residents and migrants, and Orthodox Christians and Muslims.
At the end of September, the Moscow Center for Social Prognostication asked 4,000 Russian Federation citizens about their views as part of that institution’s effort to evaluate the relative attractiveness to the electorate of the various parties competing the upcoming parliamentary elections (http://www.apn.ru/publications/print18099.htm).
The respondents were asked “which social contradictions in [their] region (town) in [their] view are the most sharp?” They were given the opportunity to indicate that a particular conflict was “very sharp,” “present but not very sharp” or “don’t exist or are small.”
Here are the percentages – with the three possible responses listed respectively in each case – for the top 11 categories: rich and power – 50.5, 29.1, and 11.0; the authorities and the people – 48.0, 31.3, and 11.4; Moscow and the provinces – 36.6, 33.1, and 21.0; and ethnic Russians and non-Russians – 24.5, 36.3, and 29.9.
Other categories and the responses included clashes between younger and older generations – 23.1, 43.4, and 24.3; the authorities and the oligarchs – 18.7, 34.0, and 38.0; long-time residents and migrants – 18.2, 40.8, and 31.7; and Orthodox Christians and Muslims – 16.0, 33.8, and 40.9.
And still a third set of categories and the responses of Russians to them involved tensions between democrats and opponents of democracy – 12.1, 35.1, and 43.5; the Western oriented and supporters of an independent path of development for Russia – 11.0, 32.0, and 47.7; and between active and passive people – 9.5, 33.9, and 47.3.
As Mikhail Tulskiy points out in his APN commentary on this poll, these results suggest that the Russian electorate should be more responsive to those politicians, parties and groups which advocate left-of-center policies and that voters today are less exercised by ethnic, religious and migration issues than many now assume.
Indeed, the Moscow analyst argues, only Russians living in Moscow and St. Petersburg identify the influx of migrants as being a sufficiently sharp problem to push it up to third place in the ranking, with Russians living elsewhere evaluating this particular divide as being of less moment.
That judgment may be correct, but there is another possibility: If one combines those concerned about relations between Russians and non-Russians, Moscow and the provinces, and Orthodox and Muslims – categories that overlap – then these “ethnic” issues could in fact prove more potent than a first reading of these results might suggest.
Such a possibility is suggested by the findings of a second poll that was released last Thursday by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) concerning Russians’ attachment to and attitudes about religion as faith and as identity (http://wciom.ru/novosti/press-vypuski/press-vypusk/single/8954.html).
Although 53 percent of the respondents identified themselves as religious, compared to six percent who indicated that they were “convinced atheists,” only ten percent of the Russian sample indicated that they took part in religious life on a regular basis.
But more intriguing, those questioned by VTsIOM pollsters at the end of August and beginning of September were asked to specify the reasons why they believed Russians turn to religion, a surrogate for the unasked question of why the respondents themselves did so.
Twenty-one percent said that people turn to religion because a particular faith is part of their own national traditions, with roughly the same saying they did so for comfort in times of grief or seeing it as providing a moral ideal for their lives. Significantly smaller shares said it reflected fashion, belief in the supernatural, or backwardness.
Intriguingly, ten percent of the sample said they saw no indication that Russians were in fact now turning more to religion.
And in response to a third question – what should be the source of moral values for the rising generation, 67 percent said the family, 17 percent said the school, five percent said television and the mass media, and only four percent said religious organizations.
That last pair of figures prompted some Russian news agencies to suggest that Russians “trust television and the mass media more than ‘spiritual leaders’” to provide the primary source of moral guidance for members of the next generation in that country (http://www.nr2.ru/society/144584.html).
That almost certainly is a distortion, but the fact that these data permit someone to draw that conclusion highlights a fundamental truth: religious groups in Russia today overwhelming have far less influence as moral leaders than they do as signifiers of national traditions and identities.
Vienna, October 15 – Fifty percent of Russians say that “contradictions” between rich and power are now “very sharp” in their home areas -- more than twice the share of those who say the same about relations between ethnic Russians and non-Russians, longtime residents and migrants, and Orthodox Christians and Muslims.
At the end of September, the Moscow Center for Social Prognostication asked 4,000 Russian Federation citizens about their views as part of that institution’s effort to evaluate the relative attractiveness to the electorate of the various parties competing the upcoming parliamentary elections (http://www.apn.ru/publications/print18099.htm).
The respondents were asked “which social contradictions in [their] region (town) in [their] view are the most sharp?” They were given the opportunity to indicate that a particular conflict was “very sharp,” “present but not very sharp” or “don’t exist or are small.”
Here are the percentages – with the three possible responses listed respectively in each case – for the top 11 categories: rich and power – 50.5, 29.1, and 11.0; the authorities and the people – 48.0, 31.3, and 11.4; Moscow and the provinces – 36.6, 33.1, and 21.0; and ethnic Russians and non-Russians – 24.5, 36.3, and 29.9.
Other categories and the responses included clashes between younger and older generations – 23.1, 43.4, and 24.3; the authorities and the oligarchs – 18.7, 34.0, and 38.0; long-time residents and migrants – 18.2, 40.8, and 31.7; and Orthodox Christians and Muslims – 16.0, 33.8, and 40.9.
And still a third set of categories and the responses of Russians to them involved tensions between democrats and opponents of democracy – 12.1, 35.1, and 43.5; the Western oriented and supporters of an independent path of development for Russia – 11.0, 32.0, and 47.7; and between active and passive people – 9.5, 33.9, and 47.3.
As Mikhail Tulskiy points out in his APN commentary on this poll, these results suggest that the Russian electorate should be more responsive to those politicians, parties and groups which advocate left-of-center policies and that voters today are less exercised by ethnic, religious and migration issues than many now assume.
Indeed, the Moscow analyst argues, only Russians living in Moscow and St. Petersburg identify the influx of migrants as being a sufficiently sharp problem to push it up to third place in the ranking, with Russians living elsewhere evaluating this particular divide as being of less moment.
That judgment may be correct, but there is another possibility: If one combines those concerned about relations between Russians and non-Russians, Moscow and the provinces, and Orthodox and Muslims – categories that overlap – then these “ethnic” issues could in fact prove more potent than a first reading of these results might suggest.
Such a possibility is suggested by the findings of a second poll that was released last Thursday by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) concerning Russians’ attachment to and attitudes about religion as faith and as identity (http://wciom.ru/novosti/press-vypuski/press-vypusk/single/8954.html).
Although 53 percent of the respondents identified themselves as religious, compared to six percent who indicated that they were “convinced atheists,” only ten percent of the Russian sample indicated that they took part in religious life on a regular basis.
But more intriguing, those questioned by VTsIOM pollsters at the end of August and beginning of September were asked to specify the reasons why they believed Russians turn to religion, a surrogate for the unasked question of why the respondents themselves did so.
Twenty-one percent said that people turn to religion because a particular faith is part of their own national traditions, with roughly the same saying they did so for comfort in times of grief or seeing it as providing a moral ideal for their lives. Significantly smaller shares said it reflected fashion, belief in the supernatural, or backwardness.
Intriguingly, ten percent of the sample said they saw no indication that Russians were in fact now turning more to religion.
And in response to a third question – what should be the source of moral values for the rising generation, 67 percent said the family, 17 percent said the school, five percent said television and the mass media, and only four percent said religious organizations.
That last pair of figures prompted some Russian news agencies to suggest that Russians “trust television and the mass media more than ‘spiritual leaders’” to provide the primary source of moral guidance for members of the next generation in that country (http://www.nr2.ru/society/144584.html).
That almost certainly is a distortion, but the fact that these data permit someone to draw that conclusion highlights a fundamental truth: religious groups in Russia today overwhelming have far less influence as moral leaders than they do as signifiers of national traditions and identities.
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