NOTE: This issue of “Shorts” is larger than usual and thus divided into three parts because, as a result of the compiler’s illness, it covers events over the last two weeks rather than only one.
RUSSIA SHOULD NOT BE IN THE G-8, BONNER AND BUKOVSKY SAY.. In an open letter to the two presumptive candidates for president of the United States, Elena Bonner and Vladimir Bukovsky called on them to “re-think U.S. policies in many areas, including your relations with Moscow” and as part of that to expel Russia from the G-8. “The present regime in Russia is not just authoritarian,” they write, “it is also increasingly aggressive. It has been bad enough to witness massive human rights abuses, torture, political repressions and political assassinations in Russia, as well as ongoing genocide in the North Caucasus.” Now, “like in the times of the Cold War, the Kremlin once again poses a grave threat to international security. Bullying its neighbors, interfering into their domestic affairs, using energy exports as a tool of political blackmail, providing aid and comfort to every enemy of the free world, unleashing massive hate-mongering propaganda campaign at home against the West, duplicitous position regarding Iran’s nuclear program, supplying Israel’s neighbors with arms- this behavior leaves no doubt about the real face of the regime” (www.anticompromat.ru/bukovsky/usa_pr.html).
MEDVEDEV REAFFIRMS RUSSIA IS ‘PART OF MUSLIM WORLD.’ During his visit to Baku on July 8, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told religious leaders there that his country “in which live 20 million followers of Islam is a multi-confessional country and in this sense is part of the Muslim world.” He added that “the majority of [Russians] are Orthodox but the state has always respected and will respect other confessions as well. In this is the key to well-being” (www.mishar.ucoz.ru/news/2008-07-08-118).
ISLAMISTS NOW RECRUITING IN UNIVERSITIES, SPORTS CENTERS, NOT IN MOSQUES. Although both Russian officials and Muslim leaders in the North Caucasus insist that there are fewer and fewer members of the faithful responding to the calls of extremist groups (www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=15188), Daghestani interior ministry officers say that Islamist groups are now seeking to recruit young people not in mosques but in universities and sports centers and sometimes “simply on the street,” a shift that reflects both greater official supervision of the mosques and may account for claims that Islamists are having less success among Muslims (www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=21435).
MOSCOW’S EXTREMIST LIT LIST NOW TOPS 150 TITLES. Russian courts continue to declare various books and articles extremist, and the consolidated list maintained by the justice ministry now includes 151 titles (www.minjust.ru/index.php?id4=61).
SAKHA HAS HIGHEST YOUTH SUICIDE RATE IN WORLD – BUT REPORTING THAT IS DANGEROUS. Driven by poverty, isolation, and despair, young people in Sakha are committing suicide at a higher rate than any other community in the world, according to official figures there. But when Sakha blogger Ukhkhan (the screen name of Yakutsk journalist I.V. Nikolayev) reported that on his site, prosecutors there called him in and said they were opening a criminal case against him for publishing materials that are “discrediting” local officials (babr.ru/?pt=news&event=v1&IDE=46482).
BOOK ON SIBERIAN MUSLIMS TO BE PULPED BECAUSE OF CHURCH PICTURES. A publisher included pictures of Orthodox churches rather than Tatar mosques in a new book on the Tatars of Siberia, an action that the firm’s officials could not explain but that is forcing the authors to pulp the book. Despite their mistake and the loss of the entire tirage, the publisher is insisting that the authors of the book pay for publication, possibly setting the precedent for yet another way to restrict media freedom and the actions of groups the Russian authorities do not approve of (www.islam.ru/rus/2008-07-03/#22022).
DAGHESTANI MUSLIMS NEED DOUBLING OF HAJ SLOTS. Daghestan needs far more slots for the haj than the Russian government haj commission has assigned it this year, even though Daghestani Muslims have been allotted 8,000 of the 20,500 places that Saudi officials have given to the Russian Federation. According to Makhachkala travel agents, the number of Muslims in that North Caucasus republic who would like to go on the haj at the end of this year is at least 15,000 (www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=15233).
RUSSIAN FIRMS PRESSURE REGIME NOT TO FILL REGULATORY SLOTS. Russian corporations have pressured senior Russian politicians not to fill slots in a part of the FSB that oversees economic activities, according to intelligence analyst Andrei Soldatov. The success of their efforts underscores the emergence of yet another kind of interpenetration of the public state and nominally private corporate interests (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=8199).
ANOTHER WAY TO HIDE ELECTION FALSIFICATION IN RUSSIA. According to “Vedomosti,” the Russian government plans to prohibit officials of the country’s Central Election Commission from speaking with reporters unless they have advance permission from the leaders of that agency, a move that reflects Moscow’s restrictions on information of all kinds and that would make it more difficult for the media to cover official falsification of elections (www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article.shtml?2008/07/02/153377 and
www.sobkorr.ru/news/486B139CAA265.html).
GLASNOST COULD KILL PATRIARCHATE JUST AS IT KILLED THE SOVIET UNION. A Moscow commentator provides yet another explanation for why the Moscow Patriarchate is opposed to the convention of a church council to discuss the situation in Russian Orthodoxy, an idea that Bishop Diomid has advanced. According to Aleksei Mazan’ko, if the Russian Church ever allowed a broad public discussion of its problems, it would die just as the Soviet Union did when Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost (www.apn.ru/opinions/article20268.htm)
SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS EXPLAIN ETHNIC SEGREGATION IN MOSCOW.
Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians are “clustering” in particular neighborhoods in Moscow not so much because of their desire to live among their co-ethnics but rather for broader socio-economic factors like educational and economic success, according to Olga Vendina, a geographer at the Academy of Sciences. Armenians, she said, tend to live in more prestigious portions of Moscow like the Arbat, Toparevo-Nikulino, and Tverskaya because so many of the members of that community are part of the intelligentsia, while Azerbaijanis tend to have significantly lower educational attainments and thus live in the capital’s traditional “working class” areas like Kuntsevo, Lyublino, and Kapotno (www.odintsovo.info/news/?id=17916).
EUROPEANS READY TO PAY EXTRA NOT TO SPEND VACATIONS WITH RUSSIANS. Surveys conducted by French and German sociologists have found that Europeans are prepared to pay extra to avoid being in the same resorts in Egypt and Turkey patronized by Russian travelers, a willingness that has led some tour operators in the European Union to offer special “tours without Russians” programs (www.gzt.ru/tourism/2008/07/04/162412.html).
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Window on Eurasia Shorts for July 20 – Part II
Window on Eurasia Shorts for July 20 – Part II
BY DEFENDING DICTATORS, MOSCOW WON’T SAVE ITSELF, RUSSIAN SAYS. Russian officials clearly believe that, by defending Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe at the United Nations, they are protecting themselves against international supervision of their own increasingly authoritarian political system, according to Pavel Svyatenkov. But such a belief is doubly mistaken, the Russian nationalist writer says. On the one hand, it leads to actions that cause many in the West to look even more critically at what Moscow is doing. And on the other hand, it creates real dangers for the future of the country: “It is stupid and dangerous,” Svyatenkov argues, “to try to come to the aid of all degraded regimes in the entire world.” When the Russian empire did so, it sparked the Crimean war, he argues. The Soviet Union collapsed after pursuing a policy of making friends “with African dictators.” And contemporary Russia could go the same way if it pursues the same policy, Svyatenkov insists. “Perhaps,” he says, “it is time to stop supporting dictators and reflect over what we ourselves can bring to this world that is truly revolutionary” rather than a reaction to the real progress the West promotes (www.apn.ru/column/article20332.htm).
MOSCOW WANTS LARGER SAY OVER ARCTIC SHIPPING LANES. In announcing that Moscow will seek UN recognition next year of a larger economic exclusion zone in the Arctic, Artur Chilingarov, a Polar explorer who also serves in the Duma, stressed that Moscow is concerned not only with access to undersea mineral wealth but also with having a greater say over shipping in this region, a reflection of the new possibilities that global warming is opening up there (www.gzt.ru/politics/2008/07/08/144432.html).
FEW RUSSIANS USING INTERNET FOR POLITICAL INFORMATION. Even as the Russian government presses for new legislation that would declare the Internet a public medium and thus provide a legal basis for Moscow officials who want to prevent its being used against them (http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=911824), new research by the Levada Center shows that fewer than 10 percent of Russians use the relatively uncensored Russian Internet for political information (www.levada.ru/press/2008071701.html). The same research, however, found that differences in Internet use between Moscow and other cities have declined, although urban residents still go online twice as often as rural ones.
50 PERCENT OF RUSSIANS SMOKE, MEDEVEDEV SAYS. Russia now has the highest percentage of smokers in the world, President Dmitry Medvedev says, with public health officials there warning that smoking and high rates of alcohol consumption, both matters of personal choice, are “killing the Russian nation” (top.rbc.ru/society/14/07/2008/201056.shtml and www.utro.ru/articles/2008/07/14/751843.shtml).
CHECHEN AUTHOR SAYS HE DEFENDS RUSSIANS IN CHECHNYA, CHECHENS IN RUSSIA. In a comment to the Prague Watchdog site that has been picked up by many Russian internet petals, German Sadulayev, the author of the controversial book, “I am a Chechen” said that he is a man caught between two cultures. “In Chechnya, I have had to defend the honor of Russians and [elsewhere in Russia] I have had to do the same thing for the honor of Chechens”
(www.nazlobu.ru/publications/article2851.htm).
RISING INFLATION PUSHES UP PERCENTAGE OF POOR IN RUSSIA. While overall inflation in the Russian Federation is 14 percent, for the country’s poorest residents who spend most of their incomes on food, the effective rate is now more than 25 percent, an increase that is boosting the number of people officially classified as poor to 20 million and spreading hardship across the country (www.b-port.com/news/archive/2008-07-14-20/).
ECOLOGISTS DENOUNCE MEDVEDEV’S SUPPORT FOR NUCLEAR POWER, PUTIN’S POLICIES FOR SOCHI GAMES. Russian ecologists blasted President Dmitry Medvedev for pushing nuclear power at the G-8 meeting in Japan (www.ecodefense.ru/view.php?id=553). Meanwhile, other Russian ecologists said that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had not gone nearly far enough in announcing plans to shift some of the controversial venues for the Sochi Olympics out of environmentally sensitive regions (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1225000.html). Indeed, some of them suggested that Putin had done what he had done only to avoid having UNESCO issue a finding against Moscow that might effectively kill those games (www.sobesednik.ru/archive/sb/26_2008/putin_zelen/). Those games may also be threatened by new ethnic tensions, the result of importing outside gastarbeiters to construct these sites (http://www.yuga.ru/news/128867/index.html).
AFGANTSY AND OTHERS WANTED TO KILL GORBACHEV, FORMER KGB OFFICIAL SAYS. Major General Viktor Aleynikov, the KGB officer who was in charge of the 9th Administration of that agency and thus responsible for the personal security of the USSR’s top leadership at the end of Soviet times, said that veterans of the Afghan war were among those who plotted to kill the first and last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev whom they blamed for the inglorious end of Moscow’s campaign in Afghanistan and for the weakening of Soviet power more generally (www.mk.ru/blogs/MK/2008/07/10/society/361579/?%3E:CH5=85/).
90 PERCENT OF RUSSIAN MERCHANT MARINE SCHOOL GRADS WORK FOR FOREIGN COMPANIES. Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s deputy prime minister, said that Moscow is concerned that “only nine percent of Russian graduates of merchant marine schools work for the motherland” and that the Russian government is trying to figure out ways to ensure that those trained in Russia at government expense – more than 70 percent of those enrolled receive scholarship support of one kind or another -- will work for Russia upon graduation (www.regnum.ru/news/fd-nw/1024027.html).
MASS GRAVE OF SOVIET VICTIMS IN 1918 FOUND IN UDMURTIA. Researchers of the Academy of Sciences have found a mass grave containing the bodies of 7,000 workers from the Izhevsk and Votkinsk arms factories who were shot by local communists in 1918 after revolting against Soviet power (www.life.ru/video/4148). Not only was this the first great working class revolt against communism – many who escaped this killing field went on to fight in Admiral Kolchak’s White Russian armies – but because the Cheka in Lenin’s time was so proud of what it had done that it published lists in local papers of those it had liquidated. Consequently, scholars have long known who was killed but not where they were buried.
BY DEFENDING DICTATORS, MOSCOW WON’T SAVE ITSELF, RUSSIAN SAYS. Russian officials clearly believe that, by defending Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe at the United Nations, they are protecting themselves against international supervision of their own increasingly authoritarian political system, according to Pavel Svyatenkov. But such a belief is doubly mistaken, the Russian nationalist writer says. On the one hand, it leads to actions that cause many in the West to look even more critically at what Moscow is doing. And on the other hand, it creates real dangers for the future of the country: “It is stupid and dangerous,” Svyatenkov argues, “to try to come to the aid of all degraded regimes in the entire world.” When the Russian empire did so, it sparked the Crimean war, he argues. The Soviet Union collapsed after pursuing a policy of making friends “with African dictators.” And contemporary Russia could go the same way if it pursues the same policy, Svyatenkov insists. “Perhaps,” he says, “it is time to stop supporting dictators and reflect over what we ourselves can bring to this world that is truly revolutionary” rather than a reaction to the real progress the West promotes (www.apn.ru/column/article20332.htm).
MOSCOW WANTS LARGER SAY OVER ARCTIC SHIPPING LANES. In announcing that Moscow will seek UN recognition next year of a larger economic exclusion zone in the Arctic, Artur Chilingarov, a Polar explorer who also serves in the Duma, stressed that Moscow is concerned not only with access to undersea mineral wealth but also with having a greater say over shipping in this region, a reflection of the new possibilities that global warming is opening up there (www.gzt.ru/politics/2008/07/08/144432.html).
FEW RUSSIANS USING INTERNET FOR POLITICAL INFORMATION. Even as the Russian government presses for new legislation that would declare the Internet a public medium and thus provide a legal basis for Moscow officials who want to prevent its being used against them (http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=911824), new research by the Levada Center shows that fewer than 10 percent of Russians use the relatively uncensored Russian Internet for political information (www.levada.ru/press/2008071701.html). The same research, however, found that differences in Internet use between Moscow and other cities have declined, although urban residents still go online twice as often as rural ones.
50 PERCENT OF RUSSIANS SMOKE, MEDEVEDEV SAYS. Russia now has the highest percentage of smokers in the world, President Dmitry Medvedev says, with public health officials there warning that smoking and high rates of alcohol consumption, both matters of personal choice, are “killing the Russian nation” (top.rbc.ru/society/14/07/2008/201056.shtml and www.utro.ru/articles/2008/07/14/751843.shtml).
CHECHEN AUTHOR SAYS HE DEFENDS RUSSIANS IN CHECHNYA, CHECHENS IN RUSSIA. In a comment to the Prague Watchdog site that has been picked up by many Russian internet petals, German Sadulayev, the author of the controversial book, “I am a Chechen” said that he is a man caught between two cultures. “In Chechnya, I have had to defend the honor of Russians and [elsewhere in Russia] I have had to do the same thing for the honor of Chechens”
(www.nazlobu.ru/publications/article2851.htm).
RISING INFLATION PUSHES UP PERCENTAGE OF POOR IN RUSSIA. While overall inflation in the Russian Federation is 14 percent, for the country’s poorest residents who spend most of their incomes on food, the effective rate is now more than 25 percent, an increase that is boosting the number of people officially classified as poor to 20 million and spreading hardship across the country (www.b-port.com/news/archive/2008-07-14-20/).
ECOLOGISTS DENOUNCE MEDVEDEV’S SUPPORT FOR NUCLEAR POWER, PUTIN’S POLICIES FOR SOCHI GAMES. Russian ecologists blasted President Dmitry Medvedev for pushing nuclear power at the G-8 meeting in Japan (www.ecodefense.ru/view.php?id=553). Meanwhile, other Russian ecologists said that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had not gone nearly far enough in announcing plans to shift some of the controversial venues for the Sochi Olympics out of environmentally sensitive regions (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1225000.html). Indeed, some of them suggested that Putin had done what he had done only to avoid having UNESCO issue a finding against Moscow that might effectively kill those games (www.sobesednik.ru/archive/sb/26_2008/putin_zelen/). Those games may also be threatened by new ethnic tensions, the result of importing outside gastarbeiters to construct these sites (http://www.yuga.ru/news/128867/index.html).
AFGANTSY AND OTHERS WANTED TO KILL GORBACHEV, FORMER KGB OFFICIAL SAYS. Major General Viktor Aleynikov, the KGB officer who was in charge of the 9th Administration of that agency and thus responsible for the personal security of the USSR’s top leadership at the end of Soviet times, said that veterans of the Afghan war were among those who plotted to kill the first and last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev whom they blamed for the inglorious end of Moscow’s campaign in Afghanistan and for the weakening of Soviet power more generally (www.mk.ru/blogs/MK/2008/07/10/society/361579/?%3E:CH5=85/).
90 PERCENT OF RUSSIAN MERCHANT MARINE SCHOOL GRADS WORK FOR FOREIGN COMPANIES. Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s deputy prime minister, said that Moscow is concerned that “only nine percent of Russian graduates of merchant marine schools work for the motherland” and that the Russian government is trying to figure out ways to ensure that those trained in Russia at government expense – more than 70 percent of those enrolled receive scholarship support of one kind or another -- will work for Russia upon graduation (www.regnum.ru/news/fd-nw/1024027.html).
MASS GRAVE OF SOVIET VICTIMS IN 1918 FOUND IN UDMURTIA. Researchers of the Academy of Sciences have found a mass grave containing the bodies of 7,000 workers from the Izhevsk and Votkinsk arms factories who were shot by local communists in 1918 after revolting against Soviet power (www.life.ru/video/4148). Not only was this the first great working class revolt against communism – many who escaped this killing field went on to fight in Admiral Kolchak’s White Russian armies – but because the Cheka in Lenin’s time was so proud of what it had done that it published lists in local papers of those it had liquidated. Consequently, scholars have long known who was killed but not where they were buried.
Window on Eurasia Shorts for July 20 – Part III
Window on Eurasia Shorts for July 20 – Part III
MEDVEDEV SAYS FIGHTING NEO-FASCISM A PRIORITY. On July 15, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a new foreign policy concept paper which declared among other things that Moscow is committed to opposing “manifestations of neo-fascism, any forms of racial discrimination, aggressive nationalism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia, attempts to rewrite history and to use it to exacerbate confrontations and revaunchism in international politics and to revise the results of World War II” (xeno.sova-center.ru/45A2A1E/B645216).
XENOPHOBIC GROUP MOVES TO EXPAND RUSSIAN OPERATIONS. The largest anti-immigrant group in Russia, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), announced on July 12 that it would move “from ‘radical nationalism’ to nationalism of ‘a European type,” a declaration that many human rights advocates believe will do little to change this xenophobic and sometimes violent group (xeno.sova-center.ru/45A29F2/B62F741). Instead, this statement appears to be a product of internal splits in the organization between those who seek to promote change via the Russian political system and those who believe in challenging that system from the outside.
SELF-DESCRIBED RUSSIAN FASCIST ATTACKS ARTIST WEARING DREADLOCKS. An as yet unidentified man attacked artist and comic book author Khikhus in Moscow on July 11 “most likely” because the latter wears his hair in dreadlocks. The attacker beat him with brass knuckles and told Khikhus that “We are fascists. We will kill you.” Khikhus was treated and released at a nearby hospital (xeno.sova-center.ru/6BA2468/6BB41EE/B62F5DB).
RUSSIANS WANT ORDER BUT PERPETUATE THE DISORDER AROUND THEM. Vladimir Boykov, the head of the Sociological Center of the Russian Academy of State Service said that polls show that radical changes in Russian life over the last year have shaken the moral foundations of society. “People want order but seeing disorder, they themselves continue it.” That is, they “don’t like bribes but give them to ease the resolution of their problems.” Unfortunately, he continued, there is no obvious way out of what is an increasingly vicious circle (www.rbcdaily.ru/2008/07/09/focus/359684). Recent polls conducted by the highly respected Levada Center on corruption and bribery in Russia over the last several years reinforces Boykov’s point (www.levada.ru/press/2008071500.html).
NORTH CAUCASUS YOUTH MORE ATTACHED TO NATIONALITY THAN TO RUSSIA. Only 53 to 65 percent of young people in the North Caucasus feel themselves to be citizens of the Russian Federation, according to a poll conducted by the Rostov Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, but 78 to 85 percent of them reportedly “feel proud of their nationality” (www.ajanskafkas.com/haber,19570,caucasian_youth_see_future_as_bleak.htm). Such attitudes, as well as widespread opposition there to ethnic intermarriage and living outside one’s own republic is likely to make any resolution of conflicts in that region far more difficult than either Russian or outside observers currently suggest.
MOSCOW FORCED TO CHANGE VENUES AT SOLOVKI SPORTS MEET. After a protest from the Memorial organization, Russia’s emergency ministry cancelled plans to stage an athletic competition on what had been the site of punishment cells within the Solovki GULAG complex. As the human rights group pointed out, “Russia is sufficiently large that one can organize a competition of any complexity without affecting places that are sacred for any of its citizens,” a principle that the Kremlin has not been willing to follow in the case of venues for the Sochi Olympics (grani.ru/Politics/Russia/m.138924.html).
PETERSBURG GROUP SAYS MOSCOW IMPOSING A MOSQUE THERE TO REDUCE CITY’S WESTERN TIES. According to the Ingria.info site, the Russian government is promoting “the Islamization of Petersburg” by insisting that the city allow the construction of a second mosque there (www.ingria.info/?lenta&news_action=show_news&news_id=4092). “The Asiatic essence of Muscovy requires the destruction on occupied lands of all that is connected with Western civilization,” the site, which backs independence for what is now northwestern Russia, continued. Moreover, it added, those who support the traditions of the northern Russian capital “consider such attempts to impose Asiatic ‘values’ [there] as acts of a conscious policy directed at the de-Europeanization of our land.”
FORMER KAZAN MAYOR TO REPRESENT RUSSIA AT OIC. President Dmitry Medvedev has named Kamil Iskhakov, who earlier served as mayor of Kazan and presidential plenipotentiary in the Russian Far East and has been deputy minister for regional development, to be Moscow’s permanent representative to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Jidda, a move that highlights Russia’s push for full membership in that group and one that further elevates the importance of Tatarstan in Moscow’s relations with the Muslim world (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=25518).
RUSSIAN-IRANIAN RELIGIOUS COMMISSION CALLS FOR RESPECTING BELIEVERS’ RIGHTS. The Islam-Orthodoxy Commission, set up by the Russian and Iranian governments, issued a call during its July 16-17 meeting for the international community to respect the rights of believers. The head of the Iranian delegation, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Rashshad, who heads the Tehran Institute for Research on Islamic Culture, added that “the international community should recognize religious rights as among the most basic,” a view he said Russian Orthodoxy shares. And he concluded that mankind’s move toward secularism over the last 400 years was now “happily being replaced today by a movement toward religion” (www.islamnews.ru/news-13227.html).
MEDVEDEV SAYS FIGHTING NEO-FASCISM A PRIORITY. On July 15, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a new foreign policy concept paper which declared among other things that Moscow is committed to opposing “manifestations of neo-fascism, any forms of racial discrimination, aggressive nationalism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia, attempts to rewrite history and to use it to exacerbate confrontations and revaunchism in international politics and to revise the results of World War II” (xeno.sova-center.ru/45A2A1E/B645216).
XENOPHOBIC GROUP MOVES TO EXPAND RUSSIAN OPERATIONS. The largest anti-immigrant group in Russia, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), announced on July 12 that it would move “from ‘radical nationalism’ to nationalism of ‘a European type,” a declaration that many human rights advocates believe will do little to change this xenophobic and sometimes violent group (xeno.sova-center.ru/45A29F2/B62F741). Instead, this statement appears to be a product of internal splits in the organization between those who seek to promote change via the Russian political system and those who believe in challenging that system from the outside.
SELF-DESCRIBED RUSSIAN FASCIST ATTACKS ARTIST WEARING DREADLOCKS. An as yet unidentified man attacked artist and comic book author Khikhus in Moscow on July 11 “most likely” because the latter wears his hair in dreadlocks. The attacker beat him with brass knuckles and told Khikhus that “We are fascists. We will kill you.” Khikhus was treated and released at a nearby hospital (xeno.sova-center.ru/6BA2468/6BB41EE/B62F5DB).
RUSSIANS WANT ORDER BUT PERPETUATE THE DISORDER AROUND THEM. Vladimir Boykov, the head of the Sociological Center of the Russian Academy of State Service said that polls show that radical changes in Russian life over the last year have shaken the moral foundations of society. “People want order but seeing disorder, they themselves continue it.” That is, they “don’t like bribes but give them to ease the resolution of their problems.” Unfortunately, he continued, there is no obvious way out of what is an increasingly vicious circle (www.rbcdaily.ru/2008/07/09/focus/359684). Recent polls conducted by the highly respected Levada Center on corruption and bribery in Russia over the last several years reinforces Boykov’s point (www.levada.ru/press/2008071500.html).
NORTH CAUCASUS YOUTH MORE ATTACHED TO NATIONALITY THAN TO RUSSIA. Only 53 to 65 percent of young people in the North Caucasus feel themselves to be citizens of the Russian Federation, according to a poll conducted by the Rostov Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, but 78 to 85 percent of them reportedly “feel proud of their nationality” (www.ajanskafkas.com/haber,19570,caucasian_youth_see_future_as_bleak.htm). Such attitudes, as well as widespread opposition there to ethnic intermarriage and living outside one’s own republic is likely to make any resolution of conflicts in that region far more difficult than either Russian or outside observers currently suggest.
MOSCOW FORCED TO CHANGE VENUES AT SOLOVKI SPORTS MEET. After a protest from the Memorial organization, Russia’s emergency ministry cancelled plans to stage an athletic competition on what had been the site of punishment cells within the Solovki GULAG complex. As the human rights group pointed out, “Russia is sufficiently large that one can organize a competition of any complexity without affecting places that are sacred for any of its citizens,” a principle that the Kremlin has not been willing to follow in the case of venues for the Sochi Olympics (grani.ru/Politics/Russia/m.138924.html).
PETERSBURG GROUP SAYS MOSCOW IMPOSING A MOSQUE THERE TO REDUCE CITY’S WESTERN TIES. According to the Ingria.info site, the Russian government is promoting “the Islamization of Petersburg” by insisting that the city allow the construction of a second mosque there (www.ingria.info/?lenta&news_action=show_news&news_id=4092). “The Asiatic essence of Muscovy requires the destruction on occupied lands of all that is connected with Western civilization,” the site, which backs independence for what is now northwestern Russia, continued. Moreover, it added, those who support the traditions of the northern Russian capital “consider such attempts to impose Asiatic ‘values’ [there] as acts of a conscious policy directed at the de-Europeanization of our land.”
FORMER KAZAN MAYOR TO REPRESENT RUSSIA AT OIC. President Dmitry Medvedev has named Kamil Iskhakov, who earlier served as mayor of Kazan and presidential plenipotentiary in the Russian Far East and has been deputy minister for regional development, to be Moscow’s permanent representative to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Jidda, a move that highlights Russia’s push for full membership in that group and one that further elevates the importance of Tatarstan in Moscow’s relations with the Muslim world (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=25518).
RUSSIAN-IRANIAN RELIGIOUS COMMISSION CALLS FOR RESPECTING BELIEVERS’ RIGHTS. The Islam-Orthodoxy Commission, set up by the Russian and Iranian governments, issued a call during its July 16-17 meeting for the international community to respect the rights of believers. The head of the Iranian delegation, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Rashshad, who heads the Tehran Institute for Research on Islamic Culture, added that “the international community should recognize religious rights as among the most basic,” a view he said Russian Orthodoxy shares. And he concluded that mankind’s move toward secularism over the last 400 years was now “happily being replaced today by a movement toward religion” (www.islamnews.ru/news-13227.html).
Window on Eurasia: Reaction to Dystopian Novel Highlights Continuing Fears of Russia’s Disintegration
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 20 – A dystopian novel positing the disintegration of the Russian Federation over the next several decades has sparked reactions in the Russian blogosphere that suggest many residents of that country still fear such an outcome, however much the Kremlin and its supporters discount that possibility.
Fedor Krasheninnikov, the Yekaterinburg author of “After Russia” -- the complete text of which is available at zvezda.ru/cult/2008/03/09/posle_rossii.htm -- told the “Polar Star” portal that the thousands of reactions to his book posted online show that “the possibility of the disintegration of Russia disturbs many” (zvezda.ru/cult/2008/07/16/krasheninnikov_2.htm).
Most Russian novels about the future, he says, fall into one of two categories, neither of which is designed to make Russians reflect about the problems facing their country. On the one hand, Krasheninnikov said, there are novels which describe the abyss Russia has fallen into and lead residents to conclude that they have no option but to support the regime in power.
And on the other, there are many novels which describe the current situation in the darkest terms but suggest an ultimately victorious future when despite all their current problems Russians “will defeat everyone and then lie down to sleep” and when “an impoverished America will capitulate before an Orthodox Russian force.”
But the Internet novelist continues, he has little interest in such “distant” futures and a great deal more about “our present and about what awaits us in the next few decades.” And thus he wrote “After Russia” to encourage people to reflect on what is going on now and what may take place next.
Most of the time, of course, relatively few people choose to think about such disturbing outcomes, he notes, and consequently it is the task of writers like himself to pose questions in such a way that far more people will be forced to think about them and thus make decisions and take steps to promote the kind of future they would like to see.
Krasheninnikov says that he is satisfied that his novel, whatever its literary shortcomings, has done that because besides the suggestions of some Russian nationalists that he is an “enemy of Russia,” there have been many thoughtful discussions by readers as to what the current situation is like and consequently what the future is likely to hold.
“From the outside,” he suggests, Russia today “creates a very optimistic impression, but alas this is propaganda.” The country suffers from “a mass of problems,” all of which arise from the following sad reality: “Contemporary Russia,” the novelist stresses, “is a country with an indifferent population and a cynical ruling group.”
The population is indifferent because of inflation, low pay, growing prices, and the like. And because that is so, “if someone in Ukraine thinks that a clutch of Internet activists who promise to send tanks and planes to the Crimea represents anyone beyond themselves then I can only sympathize” with such people.”
“I myself at one time came from Kazakhstan” and know all too well that “people in Russia simply do not know anything about how Russians in the countries of the CIS live.” And what is more and what is worse, people in Russia “do not especially want to know anything about that” because often Russians there live better than Russians in Russia itself.
But “the chief problem” is existence of an ideologically bankrupt and totally compromised elite. “The Russian Federation does not have any ideology” at all. “The ruling circles are connected flesh and blood with the CPSU and the KGB” and constantly strive to stress their “continuity” with the past, including the tsarist period.
That creates a problem, Krasheninnikov says, because it is far from clear what kind of an ideology can simultaneously embrace as “heroes both Dzerzhinsky and Nicholas II, the torturers and the victims?” And without an ideology to guide the state in dealing with the population or the world, Moscow constantly changes course to meet the personal needs of the elite.
The Moscow elite now, he argues, “in fact is unconcerned about the fate of Russian people in Ukraine. For it is important only that [the Ukrainians] play for gas completely and in a timely fashion. If the government of Ukraine will do so, then this elite will lose any interest in the fate of Russians there” – and all comments about “the return of Crimea will stop.
Especially instructive in this regard, Krasheninnikov argued, is the situation that has arisen as a result of “the gas conflict with Belarus.” That country, “traditionally said to be the best friend of Russia,” suddenly over the course of “a few days” of a dispute about prices was transformed into “a symbol of black ingratitude” and Luskashenko into a tyrant.
As soon as the Belarusian president “agreed to pay up [for the gas at more or less the price that the Russian government required], however, then “Belarus again became the most fraternal country” for Moscow’s elite. “That’s an ideology for you,” the Russian novelist says. “That’s a foreign policy!”
Unfortunately, Krasheninnikov suggests, this narrowly selfish approach to Russia’s interests by its so-called elite is not limited to Ukraine or Belarus. It informs all of Russia’s foreign policies in recent years, policies which he suggests have left Moscow “without any serious allies.”
Russians should understand what that can lead to, the author of “After Russia” continues. “In the history of Russia there has already been a moment when the ‘wise’ foreign policy of national leader Nicholas I led [the] country to complete isolation and defeat in the Crimean War.”
“What is taking place now? An indecent and never-ending fight with Ukraine, a tragi-comic standoff with diminutive Georgia, a spitting match with Estonia. What is the sense of any of that?” the novelist asks. “How does this make Russia great if it never goes beyond words and never will go beyond them?”
“For everyone knows that the so-called elite of present-day Russia keeps its money in Europe and however much our leaders threaten Europe with a fist to win support from [Russian] voters, at the end of the day, they will do what is needed because their wallets are always closer to them” than the Russian people or anything else.
And that in turn will only contribute to a further divide between the Russian people and those in power in Moscow, Krasheninnikov concludes, thus undercutting not only the Kremlin’s ability to deal with the rest of the world but also its capacity even to maintain the territorial integrity of the country in the future.
Vienna, July 20 – A dystopian novel positing the disintegration of the Russian Federation over the next several decades has sparked reactions in the Russian blogosphere that suggest many residents of that country still fear such an outcome, however much the Kremlin and its supporters discount that possibility.
Fedor Krasheninnikov, the Yekaterinburg author of “After Russia” -- the complete text of which is available at zvezda.ru/cult/2008/03/09/posle_rossii.htm -- told the “Polar Star” portal that the thousands of reactions to his book posted online show that “the possibility of the disintegration of Russia disturbs many” (zvezda.ru/cult/2008/07/16/krasheninnikov_2.htm).
Most Russian novels about the future, he says, fall into one of two categories, neither of which is designed to make Russians reflect about the problems facing their country. On the one hand, Krasheninnikov said, there are novels which describe the abyss Russia has fallen into and lead residents to conclude that they have no option but to support the regime in power.
And on the other, there are many novels which describe the current situation in the darkest terms but suggest an ultimately victorious future when despite all their current problems Russians “will defeat everyone and then lie down to sleep” and when “an impoverished America will capitulate before an Orthodox Russian force.”
But the Internet novelist continues, he has little interest in such “distant” futures and a great deal more about “our present and about what awaits us in the next few decades.” And thus he wrote “After Russia” to encourage people to reflect on what is going on now and what may take place next.
Most of the time, of course, relatively few people choose to think about such disturbing outcomes, he notes, and consequently it is the task of writers like himself to pose questions in such a way that far more people will be forced to think about them and thus make decisions and take steps to promote the kind of future they would like to see.
Krasheninnikov says that he is satisfied that his novel, whatever its literary shortcomings, has done that because besides the suggestions of some Russian nationalists that he is an “enemy of Russia,” there have been many thoughtful discussions by readers as to what the current situation is like and consequently what the future is likely to hold.
“From the outside,” he suggests, Russia today “creates a very optimistic impression, but alas this is propaganda.” The country suffers from “a mass of problems,” all of which arise from the following sad reality: “Contemporary Russia,” the novelist stresses, “is a country with an indifferent population and a cynical ruling group.”
The population is indifferent because of inflation, low pay, growing prices, and the like. And because that is so, “if someone in Ukraine thinks that a clutch of Internet activists who promise to send tanks and planes to the Crimea represents anyone beyond themselves then I can only sympathize” with such people.”
“I myself at one time came from Kazakhstan” and know all too well that “people in Russia simply do not know anything about how Russians in the countries of the CIS live.” And what is more and what is worse, people in Russia “do not especially want to know anything about that” because often Russians there live better than Russians in Russia itself.
But “the chief problem” is existence of an ideologically bankrupt and totally compromised elite. “The Russian Federation does not have any ideology” at all. “The ruling circles are connected flesh and blood with the CPSU and the KGB” and constantly strive to stress their “continuity” with the past, including the tsarist period.
That creates a problem, Krasheninnikov says, because it is far from clear what kind of an ideology can simultaneously embrace as “heroes both Dzerzhinsky and Nicholas II, the torturers and the victims?” And without an ideology to guide the state in dealing with the population or the world, Moscow constantly changes course to meet the personal needs of the elite.
The Moscow elite now, he argues, “in fact is unconcerned about the fate of Russian people in Ukraine. For it is important only that [the Ukrainians] play for gas completely and in a timely fashion. If the government of Ukraine will do so, then this elite will lose any interest in the fate of Russians there” – and all comments about “the return of Crimea will stop.
Especially instructive in this regard, Krasheninnikov argued, is the situation that has arisen as a result of “the gas conflict with Belarus.” That country, “traditionally said to be the best friend of Russia,” suddenly over the course of “a few days” of a dispute about prices was transformed into “a symbol of black ingratitude” and Luskashenko into a tyrant.
As soon as the Belarusian president “agreed to pay up [for the gas at more or less the price that the Russian government required], however, then “Belarus again became the most fraternal country” for Moscow’s elite. “That’s an ideology for you,” the Russian novelist says. “That’s a foreign policy!”
Unfortunately, Krasheninnikov suggests, this narrowly selfish approach to Russia’s interests by its so-called elite is not limited to Ukraine or Belarus. It informs all of Russia’s foreign policies in recent years, policies which he suggests have left Moscow “without any serious allies.”
Russians should understand what that can lead to, the author of “After Russia” continues. “In the history of Russia there has already been a moment when the ‘wise’ foreign policy of national leader Nicholas I led [the] country to complete isolation and defeat in the Crimean War.”
“What is taking place now? An indecent and never-ending fight with Ukraine, a tragi-comic standoff with diminutive Georgia, a spitting match with Estonia. What is the sense of any of that?” the novelist asks. “How does this make Russia great if it never goes beyond words and never will go beyond them?”
“For everyone knows that the so-called elite of present-day Russia keeps its money in Europe and however much our leaders threaten Europe with a fist to win support from [Russian] voters, at the end of the day, they will do what is needed because their wallets are always closer to them” than the Russian people or anything else.
And that in turn will only contribute to a further divide between the Russian people and those in power in Moscow, Krasheninnikov concludes, thus undercutting not only the Kremlin’s ability to deal with the rest of the world but also its capacity even to maintain the territorial integrity of the country in the future.
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