Paul Goble
Vienna, October 19 – Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s recent suggestion that the Russian government should re-establish a ministry for nationality affairs not only indicates that there may be growing support for that but also begs the question as to what issues such an agency should be responsible for and what powers it should have.
Indeed, Sergei Markedonov argues in an analysis posted online today, such questions have plagued all Russian efforts to create a nationalities ministry that performs real political tasks and is not limited to a propagandistic, even “folkloric” enterprise (http://www.polit.ru/author/2007/10/19/luzhkov.html).
After the 1917 revolution, Lenin established the Commissariat for Nationality Affairs under Joseph Stalin, but that institution proved both too weak – Stalin paid relatively little attention to it much of the time – and too meddlesome – its operatives presumed to have the right to get involved in all issues where ethnicity was a factor.
As a result, Stalin himself liquidated this institution in 1924, and his Soviet successors did not try to recreate it. (For a useful discussion of the tensions that undermined this institution, see Stephen Blank’s The Sorcerer As Apprentice: Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities, 1917-1924 (Greenwood, 1994).)
But with the end of the Soviet Union, Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed to establish first a state committee on nationalities and then in 1994 a ministry wit responsibilities in this area. But neither he nor his colleagues were ever happy with these arrangements and subjected the latter to numerous reorganizations.
Then in October 2001, his successor Vladimir Putin did away with the nationalities ministry entirely – although he did appoint a “minister without portfolio” to oversee policies in this area and to develop a concept paper on what Moscow’s nationality policy should be.
But efforts to reach agreement on that document quickly failed, and Putin’s own commitment to the re-centralization of power first in Moscow and then in the Kremlin and his desire to promote Russian identity political and ethnic effectively blocked the re-establishment of such a ministry.
Recently, however, Putin’s own policies appear to have opened the way for some experiments at the regional level. In one, involving the new Perm kray, a special ministry is being set up to deal with the now subordinate Komi-Permyak district (http://www.izvestiya.ru/perm/article3109125/index.html).
And in nother, in the Komi Republic, the government has announced that it will launch a 25-person ministry for nationality affairs at the start of next year in place of the existing department for ethnic affairs with its eight employees within the ministry of culture (http://finougor.ru/?q=node=4835).
Such efforts and growing concern about inter-ethnic affairs and migration has prompted more senior officials like Luzhkov to raise the issue, either in the hopes of winning political points in this political season or out of the belief, frequently expressed, that “a multi-national country can’t do without a nationalities ministry.”
But Markedonov, one of Russia’s most thoughtful commentators on ethno-politics, argues that most of these proposals have not been thought through or would lead to the creation of an institution whose primary tasks would be to promote “friendship of the peoples” rather than resolve ethno-national problems.
But that would be a mistake because, as he says, “peoples as a matter of principle cannot become friends, only people and citizens, operating on their own life experience and knowledge can do so.” And because that is the case, any new ministry in this area must not represent a revival of what was done in the past.
Indeed, he continues, it should not be a ministry for nationality affairs at all. Instead, it should be a ministry for nationality policy, whose tasks would include “the coordination, diagnosis, and predicting inter-ethnic relations” in the country, “the development and realization of reforms in federal relations, the development of a state program on migration, and the evaluation of educational programs in the regions.
Were such a ministry with these responsibilities to be created, Markedonov suggests, then he would fully support setting it up, because such a ministry would help to promote two things he argues Russia desperately needs “the de-ethnicization of politics and the formation of a single political nation.”
The Moscow analyst does not however indicate how such an agency could avoid the twin problems of earlier structures – so much power as to be dangerous or so little as to be irrelevant – but Putin’s move into the parliament may mean that he will be only to happy to have a responsible ministry he can use to expand his own power from there.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Muslims Increasingly Angry at Moscow Oblast Governor
Paul Goble
Vienna, October 19 – Tensions between leaders of the rapidly growing Muslim population of Moscow oblast and that region's governor, Boris Gromov, appear to be intensifying rapidly, with the former laying out their case against him in ever greater detail and the latter insisting that he seeks “good relations with Muslims.”
Despite the rapidly increasing size of the Muslim population in Moscow oblast, government officials there have permitted only four mosques to be constructed, and since Gromov, the former Soviet commander in Afghanistan assumed his current post, officials have adopted various strategies to block the construction of additional houses of prayer.
In a letter posted on the Muslim.ru site today, Arslan Khazrat Sadriyev, an imam who oversees Muslim communities in the oblast, documents the ways in which officials connected to Gromov have effectively blocked the construction of eleven additional mosques and prayer houses (http://www.muslim.ru/1/cont/8/19/1268.htm).
Sometimes, he said, these officials invoke various legal restrictions that make it impossible for them to approve the construction at a particular place. At other times, they cite the opposition of Russian Orthodox hierarchs and lay activists who do not want to see mosques in what they consider to be an Orthodox Christian region.
But at still others, Sadriyev told Portal-Credo.ru, what officials of the Gromov administration have done “approaches the absurd.” Thus, the head of Kolomna said that Muslims would have to secure the blessing of Orthodox Metropolitan Yuvenaliy of Krutitskiy and Kolomenskiy before the city would approve building a mosque.
And the mayor of the small town of Krasnozavodsk, which adjoins Sergiyev Posad, the headquarters of the Moscow Patriarchate, told the Muslims that he would approve the construction of a mosque only if the Muslims would build an Orthodox church (http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=authority&id=851).
Tensions between Muslims and Gromov have been simmering ever since he took office --Sadriyev and others have indicated that they had “normal” working relations with his predecessor, Anatoliy Tyazhlov – but they broke out into the open over the last few weeks because of two public declarations.
The first, by the Muslim community itself, denounced Gromov for what its leaders described as his obstructionism, his tilt toward the Russian Orthodox Church and its laiety, and his role in “the unjust war” in Afghanistan, where he was the last Soviet general in command.
To underscore their anger, the Muslim leaders said that they and their followers would not be voting for Gromov and the United Russia list in the upcoming parliamentary elections unless he and the officials under him change rapidly course, obey the law, and allow more mosques to be built.
The second declaration, by four lay Orthodox groups known for their strident Russian nationalism, denounced the Muslims for criticizing Gromov and the Afghan war, accused Sadriyev of having a criminal past, and demanded that Talgat Tadzhuddin, head of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), assume control of Muslims there.
In an effort to calm the situation, Gromov told the media that he has always “tried to have good relations with Muslims, that claims to the contrary are “absolutely untrue,” and that ruling on applications for the construction of mosques was not something that was “in[his] competence” (http://www.rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=173791).
Neither the Muslim leaders nor religious rights activists accept what he is saying as the last word. Sadriyev for his part said that Gromov was behind what is happening, that it was a violation of Russian constitution and that he and his co-religionists plan to appeal to President Vladimir Putin to override the governor.
And Valeriy Yemelyanov, a Moscow-based religious rights activist said, Gromov was engaged in a most dangerous game, one that might win him some support from Russian Orthodox Christians but that at the same time could threaten the stability of the country (http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=comment&id=1316).
“Elementary analysis shows,” he suggested, “that the results of [Gromov’s] approach in relation to Muslims who act according to official rules and actively seek cooperation with the authorities will be to drive their activity underground in whole or in part and the dissemination of all kinds of extremist ideas.”
Putin certainly does not want that to happen, but whether he will be willing to overrule or at least rein in the otherwise relatively popular Governor Gromov in this electoral season remains very much an open question, one whose answer will be awaited not only by Muslims in Moscow but by the faithful across the Russian Federation.
Vienna, October 19 – Tensions between leaders of the rapidly growing Muslim population of Moscow oblast and that region's governor, Boris Gromov, appear to be intensifying rapidly, with the former laying out their case against him in ever greater detail and the latter insisting that he seeks “good relations with Muslims.”
Despite the rapidly increasing size of the Muslim population in Moscow oblast, government officials there have permitted only four mosques to be constructed, and since Gromov, the former Soviet commander in Afghanistan assumed his current post, officials have adopted various strategies to block the construction of additional houses of prayer.
In a letter posted on the Muslim.ru site today, Arslan Khazrat Sadriyev, an imam who oversees Muslim communities in the oblast, documents the ways in which officials connected to Gromov have effectively blocked the construction of eleven additional mosques and prayer houses (http://www.muslim.ru/1/cont/8/19/1268.htm).
Sometimes, he said, these officials invoke various legal restrictions that make it impossible for them to approve the construction at a particular place. At other times, they cite the opposition of Russian Orthodox hierarchs and lay activists who do not want to see mosques in what they consider to be an Orthodox Christian region.
But at still others, Sadriyev told Portal-Credo.ru, what officials of the Gromov administration have done “approaches the absurd.” Thus, the head of Kolomna said that Muslims would have to secure the blessing of Orthodox Metropolitan Yuvenaliy of Krutitskiy and Kolomenskiy before the city would approve building a mosque.
And the mayor of the small town of Krasnozavodsk, which adjoins Sergiyev Posad, the headquarters of the Moscow Patriarchate, told the Muslims that he would approve the construction of a mosque only if the Muslims would build an Orthodox church (http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=authority&id=851).
Tensions between Muslims and Gromov have been simmering ever since he took office --Sadriyev and others have indicated that they had “normal” working relations with his predecessor, Anatoliy Tyazhlov – but they broke out into the open over the last few weeks because of two public declarations.
The first, by the Muslim community itself, denounced Gromov for what its leaders described as his obstructionism, his tilt toward the Russian Orthodox Church and its laiety, and his role in “the unjust war” in Afghanistan, where he was the last Soviet general in command.
To underscore their anger, the Muslim leaders said that they and their followers would not be voting for Gromov and the United Russia list in the upcoming parliamentary elections unless he and the officials under him change rapidly course, obey the law, and allow more mosques to be built.
The second declaration, by four lay Orthodox groups known for their strident Russian nationalism, denounced the Muslims for criticizing Gromov and the Afghan war, accused Sadriyev of having a criminal past, and demanded that Talgat Tadzhuddin, head of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD), assume control of Muslims there.
In an effort to calm the situation, Gromov told the media that he has always “tried to have good relations with Muslims, that claims to the contrary are “absolutely untrue,” and that ruling on applications for the construction of mosques was not something that was “in[his] competence” (http://www.rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=173791).
Neither the Muslim leaders nor religious rights activists accept what he is saying as the last word. Sadriyev for his part said that Gromov was behind what is happening, that it was a violation of Russian constitution and that he and his co-religionists plan to appeal to President Vladimir Putin to override the governor.
And Valeriy Yemelyanov, a Moscow-based religious rights activist said, Gromov was engaged in a most dangerous game, one that might win him some support from Russian Orthodox Christians but that at the same time could threaten the stability of the country (http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=comment&id=1316).
“Elementary analysis shows,” he suggested, “that the results of [Gromov’s] approach in relation to Muslims who act according to official rules and actively seek cooperation with the authorities will be to drive their activity underground in whole or in part and the dissemination of all kinds of extremist ideas.”
Putin certainly does not want that to happen, but whether he will be willing to overrule or at least rein in the otherwise relatively popular Governor Gromov in this electoral season remains very much an open question, one whose answer will be awaited not only by Muslims in Moscow but by the faithful across the Russian Federation.
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