Paul Goble
Baku, May 18 – Today marks the 64th anniversary of Stalin’s expulsion of 180,000 Crimean Tatars to the wilds of Central Asia, a brutal action which members of that community still refer to as the “kara gun,” the “black day” as a result of which so many suffered and died and when the nation as a whole was subjected to an unprecedented campaign of slander.
No one should ever be allowed to forget any of this lest it be repeated, but there is another and equally compelling reason for not allowing this day to pass without recollection: Moscow is keeping this “dark day” in the history of the Crimean Tatars very much alive, not to repent or help that community but to weaken Ukraine and project Russian power.
Not only did Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov suggest this week that it should be under Russian control and not only have Russian nationalists there adopted a divide-and-rule strategy, but now, a Moscow journalist has revived all the Stalin-era charges against the Crimean Tatars and even suggested that their transfer to Central Asia was justified and “comfortable.”
In “Komsomol’skaya Pravda,” Mikhail Smolin argues that the Soviet government behaved appropriately when it deported the Crimean Tatars to Central Asia, that it treated them as humanely as possible, and that post-Stalinist leaders have mishandled their situation (www.km.ru/magazin/view.asp?id={259AB665-B8C7-45C4-9C83-AB170E61FFC7}).
Smolin begins by suggesting that the Soviet government should never have given the Crimean Tatars an autonomous republic because they formed such a small share of the population in which he characterizes as a Russian region, and then he argues that newly declassified documents prove that Stalin and even Beria acted reasonably.
Tatar nationalists abroad cooperated with Hitler before and after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and 20,000 Crimean Tatars deserted from the Red Army, “the overwhelming majority of those drafted.” And many of them fought on the side of the Germans in a special Tatar Division.
“No one intends to justify either Stalin or Beria,” Smolin continues, “nor in general the methods of Soviet power. But,” he says,” under the conditions of war, the authorities of the United States forcibly assembled all Japanese living in America and settled them in concentration camps during the war.”
Consequently, the Soviet decision to do what the “Komsomolskaya Pravda” writer suggests was something similar with the Crimea Tatars was entirely reasonable. And then he goes on to make an additional argument which few post-Soviet writers have been willing to put forward with a straight face.
According to Smolin, he was “surprised” by how “soft (of course, by Stalinist standards) the resettlement” of the Crimean Tatars in Central Asia was carried out. Every Crimean Tatar family was allowed to take up to 500 kilograms of personal possessions and food. Every train carrying them had a doctor and two nurses, and the Soviet government provided food and water.
Moreover, he says the documents show that the Crimean Tatars were treated well on their arrival in Uzbekistan. Indeed, he suggests, not “many residents of the USSR during that hungry war period ate better” and “as far as political prisoners” are concerned, Smolin says, “I am simply certain that they did not.”
Smolin acknowledges that the real situation on the ground may not have been quite as the documents say, but that admission does not keep him from relying on them or “Komsomolskaya Pravda” from reproducing them via a link within his article -- See the various photographs of these documents at images.km.ru/news/picture/080516.htm.
But a more useful and authoritative comment is provided in the words of Idil P. Noyan-Izmirli, the president of the International Committee for the Crimea (ICC) on the Crimea-L list today. In it, she writes that on this “black day,” “I will remember the babies and the elderly who died on the cattle trains.”
“I will remember how their bodies were thrown out of the wagons and were immediately eaten by the hungry wolves scavenging along the train rails. I will remember the ones who died from drinking contaminated dirty waters to quench their thirsts after surviving weeks of long train rides.”
“I will remember the ones who were ridiculed for being Tatars and were called “traitors” by the local populations when they first arrived in their exile locations. I will remember how the dry heat impacted the Crimean Tatars, for they were not used to such environmental conditions in Crimea.”
“I will remember the ones who were sent to Soviet GULAGs; I will remember those who spent years in prisons because of their desire to return to their homeland. I will also remember the survivors and their sacrifices. I will remember the mothers who went hungry for days on special settlement camps so that their children had one more slice of bread to eat.”
“I will remember the youth who were a part of the forced-labor in coal mines of Tula, Siberia, and the Urals. [And]I will remember the fathers who returned from the front and did not know where their families were. I will remember the family members who never found each other again.”
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Window on Eurasia: How the Russian Bureaucracy Worked to Capture, then Close Down the Mari ‘Theme’
Paul Goble
Baku, May 18 – Among the more disturbing actions of the Putin regime have been its moves to assume control over nominally public organizations, thus freezing out popular activists of one kind or another while allowing the Kremlin to point to the existence of these institutions as evidence of Russia’s supposed progress toward democracy and a civil society.
An especially noxious example of this, albeit one that has occurred far from Moscow, involves the ways in which the Kremlin and its local ethnic Russian allies have moved to take control of and then throttle what had been the most important public initiative in the Middle Volga republic of Mari El, the Congress of the Mari People.
Throughout the post-Soviet period, that independent body had been a thorn in the side of officials there, repeatedly calling attention to the repressive moves of the government and, what undoubtedly is far worse from the perspective of Moscow, ensuring that information about these actions reached Finno-Ugric activists and supporters abroad.
But according to two analyses of how the Russian bureaucracy took control of the VIIIth Congress of the Mari People, Moscow and its man on the scene, Mari El President Leonid Markelov, will have less reason to worry about this group saying anything untoward in the future (www.mari.ee/rus/articles/soc/2008/05/04.html, www.mari.ee/rus/news/soc/2008/05/06.html).
In an article entitled “A Congress of the People or a Gathering of Bureaucrats” and posted on a Mari site based in Estonia, Ivan Nikolayev describes just what the officials did. (In a separate article posted on the same site, Anna Shiryayeva provides statistics on attendance and content analysis of resolutions that support Nikolayev’s report.)
At the April 16-19 congress, the bureaucracy packed the house and ensured that only people it approved of were elected and that all resolutions were enthusiastic about what local and all-Russian officials have done – including a reference to the construction of a 1.5 km road between two villages -- a major departure from all previous meetings of this group.
But this outcome was possible, Nikolayev says, only because of “the great importance” the officials devoted to the preparation of the meeting and to ensuring that Markelov, Russian presidential advisor Modest Kolerov and Regnum agency head Boris Sorkin had the chance to speak and to set the tone for the sessions of the congress.
In short, Nikolayev said, what the powers that be had demanded was that “’the Mari theme’ be closed down in an intelligent way, by the hands of the delegates” themselves. That is what the authorities achieved at this meeting, although it is far from clear whether they will be able to stifle the voice of this people.
However that may be, the congress took place “as scripted,” with speakers saying what they were supposed to say, delegates agreeing to what they were supposed to agree, and both electing the officials they were supposed to elect, Nikolayev says, even when that mean that the congress had to ignore its own rules.
And that is just what the authorities forced the congress to do. In order to elect Larisa Yakovleva, a United Russian Duma deputy, to a leadership post, the organizers had to scrap provisions in the charter saying that no one could be elected who was simultaneously serving in a party or government post. And that is just what the congress did.
Given this, Nikolayev asks rhetorically, “what role was left to the participants of the Congress, who had come, it is laughable to say, to discuss ‘the consolidation of the Mari people, the unification of the joint efforts of Mari society living in various regions and countries in order to preserve the unique national culture and the actual problems of the Finno-Ugric world?”
Clearly, officials had decided to allow them only to serve as pawns “in this great game,” even to the point of insisting that the congress assemble under the slogan, “The Mari World and Civil Society”—even though, as Nikolayev cleverly notes, “the Mari world remained on one side and civil society on the other.”
The Mari people can be proud, the activist says, that they organized seven real congresses even though officials have made a mockery of the eighth, installing people in office who represent the powers and not the people and forcing delegates to vote for things that they have no role in drafting.
As to the future, Nikolayev says, there are two obvious directions in which public life among the Mari is likely to develop. On the one hand, the officials will be able to use the past authority of the congress to boost themselves, but because they are subverting it, they will find it ever less useful.
That is because, he continues, “slaves cannot build a competitive economy: they are simply not interested in doing so.” The new “autocracy” will attract some humble and obedient servants but it will never be able to attract genuine “partners,” the very thing a civil society needs in order to work.
And on the other, Nikolayev says, the Mari people will find ways to create new “all-Mari unions” beyond the control of the bureaucracy and the territory of Mari El. They will develop “a more mature platform for the unification of all and not just some of the [Mari] organizations” and thus be better positioned to advance their national interests.
To the extent that happens, the bureaucratic takeover of the Congress of the Mari people by officials like Markelov and Kolerov may prove to be just as much a Pyrrhic victory for them as the 1934 Congress of the Communist Party, which took place under the slogan “the Congress of the Victors,” but whose members were overwhelmingly swept away in the purges.
Baku, May 18 – Among the more disturbing actions of the Putin regime have been its moves to assume control over nominally public organizations, thus freezing out popular activists of one kind or another while allowing the Kremlin to point to the existence of these institutions as evidence of Russia’s supposed progress toward democracy and a civil society.
An especially noxious example of this, albeit one that has occurred far from Moscow, involves the ways in which the Kremlin and its local ethnic Russian allies have moved to take control of and then throttle what had been the most important public initiative in the Middle Volga republic of Mari El, the Congress of the Mari People.
Throughout the post-Soviet period, that independent body had been a thorn in the side of officials there, repeatedly calling attention to the repressive moves of the government and, what undoubtedly is far worse from the perspective of Moscow, ensuring that information about these actions reached Finno-Ugric activists and supporters abroad.
But according to two analyses of how the Russian bureaucracy took control of the VIIIth Congress of the Mari People, Moscow and its man on the scene, Mari El President Leonid Markelov, will have less reason to worry about this group saying anything untoward in the future (www.mari.ee/rus/articles/soc/2008/05/04.html, www.mari.ee/rus/news/soc/2008/05/06.html).
In an article entitled “A Congress of the People or a Gathering of Bureaucrats” and posted on a Mari site based in Estonia, Ivan Nikolayev describes just what the officials did. (In a separate article posted on the same site, Anna Shiryayeva provides statistics on attendance and content analysis of resolutions that support Nikolayev’s report.)
At the April 16-19 congress, the bureaucracy packed the house and ensured that only people it approved of were elected and that all resolutions were enthusiastic about what local and all-Russian officials have done – including a reference to the construction of a 1.5 km road between two villages -- a major departure from all previous meetings of this group.
But this outcome was possible, Nikolayev says, only because of “the great importance” the officials devoted to the preparation of the meeting and to ensuring that Markelov, Russian presidential advisor Modest Kolerov and Regnum agency head Boris Sorkin had the chance to speak and to set the tone for the sessions of the congress.
In short, Nikolayev said, what the powers that be had demanded was that “’the Mari theme’ be closed down in an intelligent way, by the hands of the delegates” themselves. That is what the authorities achieved at this meeting, although it is far from clear whether they will be able to stifle the voice of this people.
However that may be, the congress took place “as scripted,” with speakers saying what they were supposed to say, delegates agreeing to what they were supposed to agree, and both electing the officials they were supposed to elect, Nikolayev says, even when that mean that the congress had to ignore its own rules.
And that is just what the authorities forced the congress to do. In order to elect Larisa Yakovleva, a United Russian Duma deputy, to a leadership post, the organizers had to scrap provisions in the charter saying that no one could be elected who was simultaneously serving in a party or government post. And that is just what the congress did.
Given this, Nikolayev asks rhetorically, “what role was left to the participants of the Congress, who had come, it is laughable to say, to discuss ‘the consolidation of the Mari people, the unification of the joint efforts of Mari society living in various regions and countries in order to preserve the unique national culture and the actual problems of the Finno-Ugric world?”
Clearly, officials had decided to allow them only to serve as pawns “in this great game,” even to the point of insisting that the congress assemble under the slogan, “The Mari World and Civil Society”—even though, as Nikolayev cleverly notes, “the Mari world remained on one side and civil society on the other.”
The Mari people can be proud, the activist says, that they organized seven real congresses even though officials have made a mockery of the eighth, installing people in office who represent the powers and not the people and forcing delegates to vote for things that they have no role in drafting.
As to the future, Nikolayev says, there are two obvious directions in which public life among the Mari is likely to develop. On the one hand, the officials will be able to use the past authority of the congress to boost themselves, but because they are subverting it, they will find it ever less useful.
That is because, he continues, “slaves cannot build a competitive economy: they are simply not interested in doing so.” The new “autocracy” will attract some humble and obedient servants but it will never be able to attract genuine “partners,” the very thing a civil society needs in order to work.
And on the other, Nikolayev says, the Mari people will find ways to create new “all-Mari unions” beyond the control of the bureaucracy and the territory of Mari El. They will develop “a more mature platform for the unification of all and not just some of the [Mari] organizations” and thus be better positioned to advance their national interests.
To the extent that happens, the bureaucratic takeover of the Congress of the Mari people by officials like Markelov and Kolerov may prove to be just as much a Pyrrhic victory for them as the 1934 Congress of the Communist Party, which took place under the slogan “the Congress of the Victors,” but whose members were overwhelmingly swept away in the purges.
Window on Eurasia: Soviet Security Services Were Corrupt From the Start
Paul Goble
Baku, May 18 – Many Russians have long believed that the Cheka and its successor security agencies were, in the words of Academician Andrei Sakharov, “almost the only force in the USSR untouched by corruption.” But in fact, they were deeply corrupt, a quality that allowed them to exploit the enormous opportunities for enrichment after the fall of communism.
In articles in the last two issues of “Argumenty nedeli,” Stanislav Lekaryev traces both the corruption that was endemic in the Soviet agencies (www.argumenti.ru/publications/6665) and some of the various ways KGB officers used that background to enrich themselves under Gorbachev and after (www.argumenti.ru/publications/6702).
In February 1919, Lekaryev reports, the Soviet government issues a special decree against corruption. Forty-four Chekists immediately fell under its provisions. One case is almost amusing: Petr Voykov, who had killed the tsar, was in turn killed by a White Russian before he could be sentenced for corruption. As a result, his crimes were ignored and he became a hero.
In the 1930s, the relationship between charges and realities was to be it mildly loose, but it is significant that in 1939 along, two-thirds of the 7372 members of the security service were dismissed for corruption. The actual number may have been greater or a little less, but even this number is indicative, Lekaryev says.
After the death of Stalin, efforts to clean up the security organs by eliminating people connected with the notorious Laverty Beria opened the way for more corruption, with senior people participating and being transferred to the republics rather than being dismissed whenever they were caught.
And by Andropov’s time, corruption within the KGB had become as widespread as in any other Soviet institution, with the differences between legal and illegal action breaking down almost entirely. Officers took bribes from those who wanted their children to get into MGIMO or other prestigious universities, who needed medical treatment or who sought scarce goods.
And then a curious but entirely expected thing happened: the KGB started to struggle against corruption, using first the 10th chief directorate and then portions of the 5th chief directorate, and those involved in that struggle quickly became corrupted themselves as they saw some of the opportunities available to them.
Andropov himself wanted to put a stop to this, Lekaryev says, but he was blocked because too many senior party officials were involved in corruption directly and because his own KGB officers felt they had not had sufficiently large pay raises and thus saw corruption as an entirely justified supplement.
Their pursuit of such funds increasingly involved them with the criminal world, a tie that positioned them to exploit the opportunities the end of the command economy brought but one that undermined their authority and thus the authority of the system they were supposed to be defending.
Corruption in the KGB became a public political issue in April 1986 when Boris Yeltsin denounced corrupt practices in the entire elite and when investigators Tillman Dyane and Nikolai Ivanovo put out information about their findings. That opened the floodgates for both partial acknowledgement of the problem and its repeated denial.
But as these verbal pyrotechnics were going on, close observers noted that the KGB had lessened the pressure it had been applying to criminal groups. The reason for that is the decision of KGB officers and senior officials to use these groups to enrich themselves, moving money around and even making money in the new situation.
A new category of people from the organs was created, Lekaryev says, “commercial workers from the KGB.” They attached themselves to all black and gray economic groups and traded their influence for money, property and private power. In doing so, they were only copying what the party elite was doing.
Far more deeply involved in this process, Lekaryev continues, were two more powerful institutions: the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee and the Administration of Affairs of the same body. They moved money around, hid it at home, and ensured that party loyalists would control the economy even if it was privatized.
In doing so, the “Argumenty nedeli” journalist says, they used their own Special Subdivision Zet because party leaders did not trust the officers of the KGB to keep their mouths shut or not seek a cut in party funds being handled in this way.
KGB involvement in the shadow economy expanded from 1987 on. Moscow lifted restrictions on foreign trade in January 1987 opening new possibilities for corruption. In 1988, the KGB was even assigned responsibility for creating new mixed companies and set up approximately 500 of them.
As conditions deteriorated for the party and Soviet state in 1991, the KGB became more actively involved in concealing and using party funds, a process that led to 1746 mysterious suicides between August and October 1991 and the establishment of “almost as many” joint enterprises during the same period.
And the KGB set up some 600 bank accounts within the country and almost 500 abroad, Lekaryev says, but when an American detective agency provided information about this to Yegor Gaidar in 1992, the report, in which figured “about 30 prominent political figures” somehow disappeared without a trace.”
This last point helps to explain why Lekaryev’s two articles have appeared now: They are a reminder that some former KGB officers were deeply involved in corruption and that other officials have information about their involvement, an indication of the way in which conflicts between Putin who is in the first category and Medvedev in the second may play out.
Baku, May 18 – Many Russians have long believed that the Cheka and its successor security agencies were, in the words of Academician Andrei Sakharov, “almost the only force in the USSR untouched by corruption.” But in fact, they were deeply corrupt, a quality that allowed them to exploit the enormous opportunities for enrichment after the fall of communism.
In articles in the last two issues of “Argumenty nedeli,” Stanislav Lekaryev traces both the corruption that was endemic in the Soviet agencies (www.argumenti.ru/publications/6665) and some of the various ways KGB officers used that background to enrich themselves under Gorbachev and after (www.argumenti.ru/publications/6702).
In February 1919, Lekaryev reports, the Soviet government issues a special decree against corruption. Forty-four Chekists immediately fell under its provisions. One case is almost amusing: Petr Voykov, who had killed the tsar, was in turn killed by a White Russian before he could be sentenced for corruption. As a result, his crimes were ignored and he became a hero.
In the 1930s, the relationship between charges and realities was to be it mildly loose, but it is significant that in 1939 along, two-thirds of the 7372 members of the security service were dismissed for corruption. The actual number may have been greater or a little less, but even this number is indicative, Lekaryev says.
After the death of Stalin, efforts to clean up the security organs by eliminating people connected with the notorious Laverty Beria opened the way for more corruption, with senior people participating and being transferred to the republics rather than being dismissed whenever they were caught.
And by Andropov’s time, corruption within the KGB had become as widespread as in any other Soviet institution, with the differences between legal and illegal action breaking down almost entirely. Officers took bribes from those who wanted their children to get into MGIMO or other prestigious universities, who needed medical treatment or who sought scarce goods.
And then a curious but entirely expected thing happened: the KGB started to struggle against corruption, using first the 10th chief directorate and then portions of the 5th chief directorate, and those involved in that struggle quickly became corrupted themselves as they saw some of the opportunities available to them.
Andropov himself wanted to put a stop to this, Lekaryev says, but he was blocked because too many senior party officials were involved in corruption directly and because his own KGB officers felt they had not had sufficiently large pay raises and thus saw corruption as an entirely justified supplement.
Their pursuit of such funds increasingly involved them with the criminal world, a tie that positioned them to exploit the opportunities the end of the command economy brought but one that undermined their authority and thus the authority of the system they were supposed to be defending.
Corruption in the KGB became a public political issue in April 1986 when Boris Yeltsin denounced corrupt practices in the entire elite and when investigators Tillman Dyane and Nikolai Ivanovo put out information about their findings. That opened the floodgates for both partial acknowledgement of the problem and its repeated denial.
But as these verbal pyrotechnics were going on, close observers noted that the KGB had lessened the pressure it had been applying to criminal groups. The reason for that is the decision of KGB officers and senior officials to use these groups to enrich themselves, moving money around and even making money in the new situation.
A new category of people from the organs was created, Lekaryev says, “commercial workers from the KGB.” They attached themselves to all black and gray economic groups and traded their influence for money, property and private power. In doing so, they were only copying what the party elite was doing.
Far more deeply involved in this process, Lekaryev continues, were two more powerful institutions: the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee and the Administration of Affairs of the same body. They moved money around, hid it at home, and ensured that party loyalists would control the economy even if it was privatized.
In doing so, the “Argumenty nedeli” journalist says, they used their own Special Subdivision Zet because party leaders did not trust the officers of the KGB to keep their mouths shut or not seek a cut in party funds being handled in this way.
KGB involvement in the shadow economy expanded from 1987 on. Moscow lifted restrictions on foreign trade in January 1987 opening new possibilities for corruption. In 1988, the KGB was even assigned responsibility for creating new mixed companies and set up approximately 500 of them.
As conditions deteriorated for the party and Soviet state in 1991, the KGB became more actively involved in concealing and using party funds, a process that led to 1746 mysterious suicides between August and October 1991 and the establishment of “almost as many” joint enterprises during the same period.
And the KGB set up some 600 bank accounts within the country and almost 500 abroad, Lekaryev says, but when an American detective agency provided information about this to Yegor Gaidar in 1992, the report, in which figured “about 30 prominent political figures” somehow disappeared without a trace.”
This last point helps to explain why Lekaryev’s two articles have appeared now: They are a reminder that some former KGB officers were deeply involved in corruption and that other officials have information about their involvement, an indication of the way in which conflicts between Putin who is in the first category and Medvedev in the second may play out.
Window on Eurasia: Medvedev May Make Orthodoxy Russia’s State Religion, Muslims Fear
Paul Goble
Baku, May 17 – Several Muslim leaders say that new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will continue the Kremlin’s tilt toward the Russian Orthodox Church, possibly even going as far as seeking to amend the Constitution to make that denomination a state religion and thus reducing Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and the others to that of merely “tolerated” faiths.
Some Muslim leaders say that Medvedev has done nothing more than honestly admit the relationship between the Kremlin and the Patriarchate that had emerged during Vladimir Putin’s second presidential term. Indeed, at least one gives him credit for making explicit what his predecessor always left outspoken.
Others say Medvedev is moving this direction either because the situation in the country has changed – Moscow could hardly declare Orthodoxy a state religion when it was fighting a war in the Caucasus – or because Medvedev’s wife, known for her religious enthusiasms and close ties to senior church hierarchs, will be pushing for this.
And still a third group says that the Muslim community of the Russian Federation has only itself to blame for this development, having failed to take advantage of the opportunities it has had in the past 20 years to create a single, powerful and authoritative organization that the Russian authorities would have no choice but to deal with.
But with rare exceptions, none of the advocates of any of these positions argues that Medvedev’s tilt toward Orthodoxy reflects either an anti-Muslim attitude on his part or will lead to a dramatic worsening in the way the Russian Federation’s 20 million-plus Muslims, given Moscow’s interest in expanding its relations with the Islamic world abroad.
Orkhan Dzhemal, a religious rights activist, for example, was among the Muslim leaders who told Islam.ru that Medvedev had said nothing so far to indicate that he was is planning to go beyond what “has long existed de facto.” But even if he does, Dzhemal said he doubted Muslims would “become second-class people” (www.islam.ru/pressclub/gost/dmimerec/).
Damir Mukhetdinov, the deputy chairman of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Nizhniy Novgorod, was less optimistic, although he was very explicit that he believes that it is not Medvedev who is to blame but rather the Patriarchate whose senior hierarchs have been pushing for a codification of their special status for years.
At the same time, the Nizhniy leader said that he also believes that Russia’s Muslims are to blame for what is happening: “They did not use those possibilities which they were offered over the course of 20 years, possibilities for development, unification, and active work in a single, constructive, and positive direction.”
Moreover, Mukhetdinov continued, the country’s Muslims had missed a chance for “the intensify development of religious education, the elevation of the general cultural level [of the Muslims of the Russian Federation], and the insistence on the observation of their [basic religious and civil] rights.”
Instead, he continued, Muslim leaders have covered each other in lies and engaged in fratricidal conflicts.” As a result, we are not in a position to defend the rights of imams … [and especially in the current environment] to defend the right of believers to read religious literature.”
Because the Muslims are divided, Mukhetdinov said, “it is entirely natural” that the Russian president should turn to the one religious institution in the country which is “more monolithic, firm, united and in which there are fewer disagreements.” Muslims simply cannot be taken “seriously” as “a strategic player at the state level.”
Consequently, what the Russian president is doing should serve as a wake-up call for Muslims before “changes are introduced in the Constitution, and Orthodoxy will be defined as the basic religion and all the others only faiths which have the right to exist, ‘tolerated’ so to speak.”
And other leaders, including Damir Khayretdinov, one of Russian Islam’s most distinguished historians, said that Muslims need to recognize that they are and remain in “the second or [even] third tier” in their relations with the government but also know that Medvedev personally is not personally “negatively” inclined toward Islam.
When the current Russian president was in Kazan, Khayretdinov noted, the president to be had said all the right things about Islam, something he would have been unlikely to do in the current environment if he really planned to do something radical toward the state’s relationship with the country’s traditional faiths.
But both the leaders Islam.ru surveyed and other observers suggest, the real wild card in this situation is Medvedev’s wife, Svetlana. She is not only actively religious but maintains extremely close ties with hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, something that may mean she will be a powerful advocate of its position (www.argumenti.ru/publications/6734).
At the present time, the current issue of Argumenty nedeli reported, she is working closely with Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the External Relations Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, to promote her latest enthusiasm: the creation of a new holiday: The Day of Love, Family and Faithfulness, on the Day of the Orthodox saints, Peter and Fevronii.
Up to now, the weekly points out, “governmental structures do not yet have any relationship” with Svetlana Medvedeva’s plan, but her role as wife may make that a moot point in a country where informal personal relations rather than formal legal institutions often play the dominant role.
Baku, May 17 – Several Muslim leaders say that new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will continue the Kremlin’s tilt toward the Russian Orthodox Church, possibly even going as far as seeking to amend the Constitution to make that denomination a state religion and thus reducing Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and the others to that of merely “tolerated” faiths.
Some Muslim leaders say that Medvedev has done nothing more than honestly admit the relationship between the Kremlin and the Patriarchate that had emerged during Vladimir Putin’s second presidential term. Indeed, at least one gives him credit for making explicit what his predecessor always left outspoken.
Others say Medvedev is moving this direction either because the situation in the country has changed – Moscow could hardly declare Orthodoxy a state religion when it was fighting a war in the Caucasus – or because Medvedev’s wife, known for her religious enthusiasms and close ties to senior church hierarchs, will be pushing for this.
And still a third group says that the Muslim community of the Russian Federation has only itself to blame for this development, having failed to take advantage of the opportunities it has had in the past 20 years to create a single, powerful and authoritative organization that the Russian authorities would have no choice but to deal with.
But with rare exceptions, none of the advocates of any of these positions argues that Medvedev’s tilt toward Orthodoxy reflects either an anti-Muslim attitude on his part or will lead to a dramatic worsening in the way the Russian Federation’s 20 million-plus Muslims, given Moscow’s interest in expanding its relations with the Islamic world abroad.
Orkhan Dzhemal, a religious rights activist, for example, was among the Muslim leaders who told Islam.ru that Medvedev had said nothing so far to indicate that he was is planning to go beyond what “has long existed de facto.” But even if he does, Dzhemal said he doubted Muslims would “become second-class people” (www.islam.ru/pressclub/gost/dmimerec/).
Damir Mukhetdinov, the deputy chairman of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Nizhniy Novgorod, was less optimistic, although he was very explicit that he believes that it is not Medvedev who is to blame but rather the Patriarchate whose senior hierarchs have been pushing for a codification of their special status for years.
At the same time, the Nizhniy leader said that he also believes that Russia’s Muslims are to blame for what is happening: “They did not use those possibilities which they were offered over the course of 20 years, possibilities for development, unification, and active work in a single, constructive, and positive direction.”
Moreover, Mukhetdinov continued, the country’s Muslims had missed a chance for “the intensify development of religious education, the elevation of the general cultural level [of the Muslims of the Russian Federation], and the insistence on the observation of their [basic religious and civil] rights.”
Instead, he continued, Muslim leaders have covered each other in lies and engaged in fratricidal conflicts.” As a result, we are not in a position to defend the rights of imams … [and especially in the current environment] to defend the right of believers to read religious literature.”
Because the Muslims are divided, Mukhetdinov said, “it is entirely natural” that the Russian president should turn to the one religious institution in the country which is “more monolithic, firm, united and in which there are fewer disagreements.” Muslims simply cannot be taken “seriously” as “a strategic player at the state level.”
Consequently, what the Russian president is doing should serve as a wake-up call for Muslims before “changes are introduced in the Constitution, and Orthodoxy will be defined as the basic religion and all the others only faiths which have the right to exist, ‘tolerated’ so to speak.”
And other leaders, including Damir Khayretdinov, one of Russian Islam’s most distinguished historians, said that Muslims need to recognize that they are and remain in “the second or [even] third tier” in their relations with the government but also know that Medvedev personally is not personally “negatively” inclined toward Islam.
When the current Russian president was in Kazan, Khayretdinov noted, the president to be had said all the right things about Islam, something he would have been unlikely to do in the current environment if he really planned to do something radical toward the state’s relationship with the country’s traditional faiths.
But both the leaders Islam.ru surveyed and other observers suggest, the real wild card in this situation is Medvedev’s wife, Svetlana. She is not only actively religious but maintains extremely close ties with hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, something that may mean she will be a powerful advocate of its position (www.argumenti.ru/publications/6734).
At the present time, the current issue of Argumenty nedeli reported, she is working closely with Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the External Relations Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, to promote her latest enthusiasm: the creation of a new holiday: The Day of Love, Family and Faithfulness, on the Day of the Orthodox saints, Peter and Fevronii.
Up to now, the weekly points out, “governmental structures do not yet have any relationship” with Svetlana Medvedeva’s plan, but her role as wife may make that a moot point in a country where informal personal relations rather than formal legal institutions often play the dominant role.
Window on Eurasia: Trusting Others Today is “an Impermissible Luxury,” Russians Say
Paul Goble
Baku, May 17 – More than seven out of ten Russians say that trusting others is an “impermissible luxury” at the present time, an attitude that not only makes it far more difficult for them to organize themselves but also limits their ability to take advantage of the assistance others may be ready to offer them, while leaving them open to exploitation by others.
The Public Opinion Foundation, which enjoys the reputation as one of the best survey research firms there, recently conducted a poll about the levels of public trust among Russians. The results have sparked a lively discussion as to their meaning for the country’s future (www.rg.ru/2008/05/14/opros.html and www.newizv.ru/news/2008-05-12/89679/).
In an article published in “Novyye izvestiya” this week, Anna Semenova summed up the poll’s results in the following way: Russians “consider that trust is an impermissible luxury in our time. If necessary, [they] will turn for help to relatives, friends and colleagues” but not to neighbors or to social organizations like the church.
According to the Public Opinion Foundation, 71 percent of Russians now say that they believe that the level of trust in Russian society had declined sharply over the last 20 years and that everyone around them at the present time is “insincere,” “dishonest”, “egotistical,” or “mean as a dog.”
Contrary to what many might expect, levels of trust are lower among village residents and poorer groups in the cities and higher among those with higher education and larger incomes, with Muscovites, who enjoy the reputation of being “indifferent egotists,” being 10 percent more trusting that villagers.
And if they do have problems, 76 percent of Russians say they will turn to relatives, 59 percent said they would rely on friends and acquaintances, 35 percent on colleagues at work, 28 percent from neighbors, and 12 percent on religious groups, but only five percent said they would turn to public organizations for help.
Sociologists believe, “Novyye izvestiya” reported, that these high levels of distrust are a product of the early 1990s “when everyone had to rely only on himself.” But they have been boosted since that time among those who have suffered from the collapse of pyramid schemes and the failure of politicians and others to keep their promises.
But in comments to that paper, Mark Sandanovsky, a Moscow psychologist, pointed to what he said was a “curious” situation: Russians trust others far less than Europeans or Americans do but they fall victims to confidence games far more often, a product of their general lack of trust and willingness to trust too much they decide are their friends.
That is a problem, but a far more serious one is that many Russians today, because they do not trust others, are unwilling to work together either as volunteers or as members of social and political organizations, a situation that postpones if not precludes the evolution of that country in the direction of a civil society.
And members of this small sector of Russian life told the paper that negative media coverage of the activities of these public groups was reinforcing Russian attitudes about these important components of an open and democratic society rather than helping residents of that country to overcome it.
Baku, May 17 – More than seven out of ten Russians say that trusting others is an “impermissible luxury” at the present time, an attitude that not only makes it far more difficult for them to organize themselves but also limits their ability to take advantage of the assistance others may be ready to offer them, while leaving them open to exploitation by others.
The Public Opinion Foundation, which enjoys the reputation as one of the best survey research firms there, recently conducted a poll about the levels of public trust among Russians. The results have sparked a lively discussion as to their meaning for the country’s future (www.rg.ru/2008/05/14/opros.html and www.newizv.ru/news/2008-05-12/89679/).
In an article published in “Novyye izvestiya” this week, Anna Semenova summed up the poll’s results in the following way: Russians “consider that trust is an impermissible luxury in our time. If necessary, [they] will turn for help to relatives, friends and colleagues” but not to neighbors or to social organizations like the church.
According to the Public Opinion Foundation, 71 percent of Russians now say that they believe that the level of trust in Russian society had declined sharply over the last 20 years and that everyone around them at the present time is “insincere,” “dishonest”, “egotistical,” or “mean as a dog.”
Contrary to what many might expect, levels of trust are lower among village residents and poorer groups in the cities and higher among those with higher education and larger incomes, with Muscovites, who enjoy the reputation of being “indifferent egotists,” being 10 percent more trusting that villagers.
And if they do have problems, 76 percent of Russians say they will turn to relatives, 59 percent said they would rely on friends and acquaintances, 35 percent on colleagues at work, 28 percent from neighbors, and 12 percent on religious groups, but only five percent said they would turn to public organizations for help.
Sociologists believe, “Novyye izvestiya” reported, that these high levels of distrust are a product of the early 1990s “when everyone had to rely only on himself.” But they have been boosted since that time among those who have suffered from the collapse of pyramid schemes and the failure of politicians and others to keep their promises.
But in comments to that paper, Mark Sandanovsky, a Moscow psychologist, pointed to what he said was a “curious” situation: Russians trust others far less than Europeans or Americans do but they fall victims to confidence games far more often, a product of their general lack of trust and willingness to trust too much they decide are their friends.
That is a problem, but a far more serious one is that many Russians today, because they do not trust others, are unwilling to work together either as volunteers or as members of social and political organizations, a situation that postpones if not precludes the evolution of that country in the direction of a civil society.
And members of this small sector of Russian life told the paper that negative media coverage of the activities of these public groups was reinforcing Russian attitudes about these important components of an open and democratic society rather than helping residents of that country to overcome it.
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