Paul Goble
Vienna, October 29 – An exemplar of the principle that “to a hammer everything looks like a nail,” President Vladimir Putin’s new representative in the Southern Federal District – a general from Russia’s foreign intelligence service who has worked on trade issues – is seeking to redefine the nature of Moscow’s problems in the North Caucasus.
Unlike his experimental and outspoken predecessor Dmitriy Kozak who often talked about the social-economic causes of instability in that region, Grigoriy Rapota, the man Putin appointed to replace him two weeks ago, appears intent on focusing instead on crime and the impact of nefarious influences from abroad.
On the one hand, that approach will play well in the Kremlin where there seems little willingness to provide the kind of support needed for the revival of the economy of that region and where there is a great deal of interest in blaming outside agitators rather than accepting any personal responsibility for what is taking place there.
But on the other, such an approach almost certainly guarantees that the long-festering problems across the region will continue to intensify and thus present Moscow with more difficult problems in the future, however much such continuity gets Putin and his associates off the hook for the moment.
When Putin named Rapota to his current post, few analysts or officials in the region expected him to make any dramatic changes, beyond possibly devoting more attention on how best to identify and then counter foreign influences in the Caucasus (http://www.kavkaz.memo.ru/newstext/news/id/11998937.html).
They based their conclusions on his long career in Russia’s foreign intelligence service as well as his subsequent positions in the Russian Security Council, ministry of trade, ministry of science, industry and technology, and, most recently, the Eurasian Economic Community, where he served as general secretary.
But at his first meeting with senior officials last Friday, Rapota showed that while such predictions may not have been wrong, they were at the very least incomplete. He told law enforcement personnel in his district that they must do more to fight crime in seven key areas (http://www.rosbaltsouth.ru/2007/10/26/425780.html).
First, he suggested, officials must address the problem of the illegal ownership of guns, since almost 70 percent of the crimes committed there involve arms. And he called for making an increasing effort to gets citizens to voluntarily turn in their extensive holdings of weapons to the authorities.
Second, the new presidential representative argued, they must combat terrorism. In recent months, Rapota noted, 84 percent of all terrorist acts in the Russian Federation took place in the Southern Federal District, an unacceptably high figure.
Third, he called for blocking the foreign sources of support both financial and ideological behind the illegal armed formations that have been carrying out such actions against the local population and Russian officials.
Fourth, he urged that there be a stepped up campaign against narcotics trafficking. Fifth, he called for a new focus on organized economic crime. Sixth, he said that officials must address official corruption not just among lower level officials, as has been the case up to now but at the most senior ones in the region as well.
And seventh, he said, officials throughout the North Caucasus must deal with the influx of immigrants from the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a flow that not only has increased in size in recent times but inevitably destabilizes the situation there.
Rapota may not be able to address all these issues in the near term, of course. But his announcement nonetheless has three immediate consequences: It suggests that Russian coverage of developments in the Northern Caucasus will increasingly view them as part of the criminal world rather than as social-political problems.
It calls into question just how successful Kozak was in his earlier post and may provide potentially lethal ammunition for his enemies in Moscow. After all, they could note that if Rapota has already found this much wrong, what was the current minister for regional development doing when he was in the Southern Federal District.
And perhaps most important to him, Rapota’s statement at the start of his tenure in the Southern Federal District means that he will likely be judged in its terms, a political reality that may lead to more arrests and trials rather than new social programs.
Whether this will make that region more stable, however, is doubtful. Indeed, Rapota’s comments last week, especially if he does not expand and modify them soon, could easily mean that the man Putin has sent to correct a problem will in the end make it much worse.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Putin Doesn’t Know What the Phrase He’s Famous For Means, Bukovskiy Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, October 29 –Vladimir Putin does not know either the origin or the meaning of the phrase – “mochit’ v sortire” -- that he is famous for and that has since been picked up by others, according to Vladimir Bukovskiy, a Soviet-era dissident who has returned to Russia in hopes of succeeding Putin as Russian president.
This crude phrase, which Putin used to describe what he planned to do to Chechens fighting against Moscow, is typically if somewhat euphemistically translated as “drown in an outhouse.” It has its origins in Russian prison camp speech, something Bukovskiy says that Putin and many others do not understand.
In remarks earlier this month at Moscow’s Sakharov Center, Bukovskiy talked about Putin’s use of this term and what it says about him and the county over which he now presides. Those remarks were picked up on Live Journal by the blogger “gladkeeh” and now have been posted at http://www.nazlobu.ru/opinions/article2322.html.
Bukovskiy’s off-the-cough comments on this point are so instructive that they merit extensive quotation:
The former dissident said that on his return to Russia he was “shocked by the transformation of the Russian language,” something that he suggested was “a reflection of the state of society.” “Today,” he continued, it is “an insane mixture of English and criminal jargon.”
But although today’s Russians now use this language, “they do not know either the one or the other.” Because of his own life experiences, Bukovskiy said, “for [him] both languages are native.” But most people “do not know the one or the other and thus use terms drawn from English and from camp jargon incorrectly.”
Such use, he stressed, “makes [him] terribly angry” because it is so dishonest. Those who employ it want to suggest that they are “tough” and have spent time in prison. But “they are lying, they never spent time in the camps or prisons! They were the ones who sent people there.” And they “are lying” when they claim to know the West.
An example of this, Bukovskiy said, is Putin’s use of the phrase “mochit’ v sortire.” “I know its origins,” the former inmate said, “but Putin doesn’t.” He was told to use it by his handlers who suggested that this would make him look tough. “But he doesn’t know [this] jargon,” as anyone familiar with it quickly realized.
The current Russian president also does not know what the phrase means, Bukovskiy noted. Why does on speak of drowning someone in an outhouse and not somewhere else? “I know,” Bukovskiy insisted, but it is all too clear that on this point at least, Putin does not have a clue.
The origins and meaning of the term, Bukovskiy said, derive from the Soviet GULAG. In the camps, the outhouses always stood apart from the places where the prisoners were housed. And consequently, when the prisoners revolted, their first goal was to kill the informers and where better to hide the bodies than in the outhouses?
Thus “the expression ‘mochit’ v sortire’ is about informers during uprisings in Stalin’s camps,” he continued. The prisoners “killed” them and then for reasons of convenience and secrecy and to send a message, the prisoners “drowned” them, Bukovskiy said.
“What does Putin know about all this?” the former dissident asked rhetorically. “Absolutely nothing,” as his use of the term both initially and subsequently shows all too clearly.
On the one-hand, this “tough guy” language suggests that Putin and his command are prepared to kill Chechens and others anywhere they find them and then and only then “drown them in outhouses.” But on the other, Putin’s use of this term raises an interesting question:
“Why is [the Russian president] going into a single outhouse with terrorists?” Bukovskiy asked, add that this is something no one can readily understand.
And then the former dissident concluded: Putin’s use of a phrase he does not know the origin of shows that the Russian president “is an imposter” who is only too glad to draw on such prison camp speech to make himself look tough. But however much he does so, Bukovskiy said, he cannot conceal that “in reality he is a small-time KGB rat.”
Vienna, October 29 –Vladimir Putin does not know either the origin or the meaning of the phrase – “mochit’ v sortire” -- that he is famous for and that has since been picked up by others, according to Vladimir Bukovskiy, a Soviet-era dissident who has returned to Russia in hopes of succeeding Putin as Russian president.
This crude phrase, which Putin used to describe what he planned to do to Chechens fighting against Moscow, is typically if somewhat euphemistically translated as “drown in an outhouse.” It has its origins in Russian prison camp speech, something Bukovskiy says that Putin and many others do not understand.
In remarks earlier this month at Moscow’s Sakharov Center, Bukovskiy talked about Putin’s use of this term and what it says about him and the county over which he now presides. Those remarks were picked up on Live Journal by the blogger “gladkeeh” and now have been posted at http://www.nazlobu.ru/opinions/article2322.html.
Bukovskiy’s off-the-cough comments on this point are so instructive that they merit extensive quotation:
The former dissident said that on his return to Russia he was “shocked by the transformation of the Russian language,” something that he suggested was “a reflection of the state of society.” “Today,” he continued, it is “an insane mixture of English and criminal jargon.”
But although today’s Russians now use this language, “they do not know either the one or the other.” Because of his own life experiences, Bukovskiy said, “for [him] both languages are native.” But most people “do not know the one or the other and thus use terms drawn from English and from camp jargon incorrectly.”
Such use, he stressed, “makes [him] terribly angry” because it is so dishonest. Those who employ it want to suggest that they are “tough” and have spent time in prison. But “they are lying, they never spent time in the camps or prisons! They were the ones who sent people there.” And they “are lying” when they claim to know the West.
An example of this, Bukovskiy said, is Putin’s use of the phrase “mochit’ v sortire.” “I know its origins,” the former inmate said, “but Putin doesn’t.” He was told to use it by his handlers who suggested that this would make him look tough. “But he doesn’t know [this] jargon,” as anyone familiar with it quickly realized.
The current Russian president also does not know what the phrase means, Bukovskiy noted. Why does on speak of drowning someone in an outhouse and not somewhere else? “I know,” Bukovskiy insisted, but it is all too clear that on this point at least, Putin does not have a clue.
The origins and meaning of the term, Bukovskiy said, derive from the Soviet GULAG. In the camps, the outhouses always stood apart from the places where the prisoners were housed. And consequently, when the prisoners revolted, their first goal was to kill the informers and where better to hide the bodies than in the outhouses?
Thus “the expression ‘mochit’ v sortire’ is about informers during uprisings in Stalin’s camps,” he continued. The prisoners “killed” them and then for reasons of convenience and secrecy and to send a message, the prisoners “drowned” them, Bukovskiy said.
“What does Putin know about all this?” the former dissident asked rhetorically. “Absolutely nothing,” as his use of the term both initially and subsequently shows all too clearly.
On the one-hand, this “tough guy” language suggests that Putin and his command are prepared to kill Chechens and others anywhere they find them and then and only then “drown them in outhouses.” But on the other, Putin’s use of this term raises an interesting question:
“Why is [the Russian president] going into a single outhouse with terrorists?” Bukovskiy asked, add that this is something no one can readily understand.
And then the former dissident concluded: Putin’s use of a phrase he does not know the origin of shows that the Russian president “is an imposter” who is only too glad to draw on such prison camp speech to make himself look tough. But however much he does so, Bukovskiy said, he cannot conceal that “in reality he is a small-time KGB rat.”
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