Paul Goble
Vienna, September 5 – In yet another echo of Moscow’s decision to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the leaders of Bashkortostan’s national movement say they will organize a joint protest by all non-Russian groups in the Russian Federation if Moscow continues to ignore Bashkortostan’s rights and demands.
The declaration, issued by the Kuk Bure movement which in the words of the Novyy region news agency “represents the interests of Bashkirs living on the territory of Bashkortostan and Russia,” makes a number of demands which that news outlet has provided an extensive summary (www.nr2.ru/moxkow/194641.html).
The Kuk Bure appeal notes that “the Russian powers that be, while supporting the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia who have suffered from acts of Georgian aggression, is ignoring the elementary requirements of the Bashkir people,” which has been living “in one state with Moscow” for 450 years.
The Russian government, it continues, has “ceased to see and listen to [the Bashkirs] and appears to have no interest in the Bashkirs who Moscow apparently “assumes” have “no other way out” than to follow Moscow’s orders, however much those directives threaten the survival of the Bashkir people.
“The Kremlin does not give the Bashkirs the full opportunity to develop their language as the state language of the Republic of Bashkortostan. Having eliminated the regional component in education, Moscow has shown that it wants to transform the Bashkirs into a faceless crowd with families or clans.”
The appeal further notes that Kuk Bure on May 22 sent a similar appeal to Moscow in which it spoke of the Bashkir’s despair about the future of their language, culture and even the people itself. We were not listened to” then, it says, because the Kremlin simply wants to continue its policy of “zombifying” the Bashkirs “via television.”
“We consider it extremely unjust and dishonest that the federal powers that be, which every year take 80 percent of the natural wealth produced in Bashkortostan ignore the Bashkirs themselves and do not devote attention to the most important national-cultural requirements of the Bashkir people.”
Moscow’s approach, it continues, is “the policy of imperialist colonizers in relationship to an indigenous people.” And consequently, the appeal said, the time has come to ask federal officials in Moscow and in Bashkortostan itself “’what are you doing for the Bashkir people?!’” and to demand an answer.
“The Bashkirs do not have any other land” than their own, the appeal goes on to specify, and thus they do not want to give it up to those from Moscow who do not speak Bashkir, do not respect Bashkirs and take away the resources of the Bashkirs leaving only destruction in their wake.
Given all this, the appeal says, the Bashkirs call on Moscow “to stop the destruction of the Bashkir language, now being promoted by the elimination of the regional component in the education system and to guarantee conditions for the complete realization of the rights of the Bashkir people for self-determination within the framework of the Republic of Bashkortostan!”
These demands, the authors of the appeal said, do not mean that the Bashkirs are seeking complete independence, but they warned that if Moscow does not respond positively to them in the wake of events in Georgia, then, the Bashkirs will organize the country’s non-Russians to press Moscow for the same rights and a return to the situation that existed under Boris Yeltsin.
Whether the Bashkirs in general or the leaders of the Kuk Bure movement in particular have the capacity to do that remains unclear, but their declaration is the clearest signal yet that what Moscow has done in South Ossetia and Abkhazia is resonating strongly among the non-Russians inside the Russian Federation.
And that in turn calls attention to a comment by a Ukrainian scholar about the situation across Eurasia. Russian and Western opinion to the contrary, Igor Losev says, “Putin has not resolved the fundamental problems of Russia; he has ‘frozen’ them,” obviously forgetting that “in Russian history after each ‘frost,’ there inevitably follows ‘a thaw.’
Putin’s good fortune and that of his country, Losev goes on to say is that on the territory of the Russian Federation, “no one is working as actively to promote separatist projects as [Moscow] is on the territory of neighboring states.” Were it otherwise, he concludes, “the results would be extremely impressive” (www2.pravda.com.ua/ru/news/2008/9/1/80315.htm).
Friday, September 5, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Wins a Major Victory on Pipelines
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 5 – With Iran’s declaration that it opposes the construction of any undersea pipelines in the Caspian on “ecological grounds” and thus will block any delimitation of the seabed that allows for them and Baku’s decision not to back the West’s push NABUCCO project, Moscow can claim its first major political victory from its invasion of Georgia.
These actions mean that the Russian government will now have full and uncontested control over pipelines between the Caspian basin and the West which pass through Russian territory and will be able either directly or through its clients like the PKK to disrupt the only routes such as Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan that bypass the Russian Federation.
That does not mean, of course, that Moscow now has effectively reestablished its control over the states of this region – all of them have other interests besides oil and gas – but it does mean that Russia has won a major victory and the West, which all too often in recent years has focused on oil and gas alone, has suffered a major defeat.
Yesterday, Mehti Safari, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, told journalists that Tehran opposes the construction of any undersea pipelines in the Caspian because “this can bring harm to the ecology of the sea.” He noted that exporting countries can send their gas out via either the Russian Federation or Iran (www.oilru.com/news/81667/).
Given the existence of “such possibilities,” the Iranian diplomat said, “why harm” the delicate eco-system of the Caspian? But in making this statement, Tehran was underscoring its willingness to destroy any chance for the completion of the NABUCCO gas pipeline in the near term that the United States and some Western European countries have been pushing for.
And because Washington opposes the flow of hydrocarbons from the Caspian basin out through Iran, Tehran’s action in fact makes it likely that many of the oil and gas exporting countries in the region will now choose to send more or even all of their gas and oil through the Russian Federation, a longstanding geopolitical goal of Moscow’s.
The geo-economic and geo-political shifts in the Caucasus as a result of Russian actions in Georgia were even more in evidence during US Vice President Dick Cheney’s brief visit to the Azerbaijani capital. According to Russian media reports, it did not go well from either a protocol or a substantive perspective (www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1020720).
First, Cheney was not met at the airport by either President Ilham Aliyev or Prime Minister Artur Rasi-zade. Instead, he was met by the first vice premier and the foreign minister. After that, he was not immediately received by the president but rather had meetings with officials of the BP-Azerbaijan oil company and the American embassy.
Then, officials in the office of the Azerbaijani president told Moscow’s “Kommersant,” Cheney was sufficiently displeased with his conversation with President Aliyev that “as a result he even refused to visit the ceremonial dinner in his honor” that the Azerbaijan leader had organized.
On the one hand, Aliyev indicated that he was not prepared to talk about going ahead with NABUCCO until Baku completes its negotiations with Russia’s Gazprom or indeed do anything else to ”support Washington and [thus] get into an argument with Moscow” given what has happened in Georgia.
And on the other, immediately after the Aliyev-Cheney meeting, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev telephoned the Azerbaijani president, an action which Kremlin sources told the Moscow paper provided Medvedev with the opportunity to explain Russia’s policies and to discuss the possibilities for the Russian and Azerbaijani presidents to meet “in the near future.”
At one level, of course, all this reflects the continuation of President Aliyev’s commitment to what he and his government call “a balanced foreign policy,” one that seeks to navigate between Moscow and the West by avoiding offending either and seeking to develop strong ties with both.
But at another, the way in which the media have covered Vice President Cheney’s visit suggests that if Baku’s policy remains a balanced one, the balance is rather different than it was before Moscow demonstrated with its invasion of Georgia and its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia that the game has changed.
Indeed, in reporting this visit, one Baku newspaper used as its headline today words that show just how much has changed over the last month. “It is not accidental,” the paper pointed out that just after the American vice president left Aliyev’s office the Russian president called (www.echo-az.com/politica09.shtml).
UPDATE on September 6: A source at the US Embassy in Baku told 1News.az that a report in Moscow’s “Kommersant” yesterday on the visit of Vice President Dick Cheney to Baku was factually incorrect. The American official did take part in a dinner and left the Azerbaijani capital “very satisfied,” the souce added. “ I understand,” the unnamed official said, “that Russian mass media want to give what they would like to have seen happen for what really did, but nothing that ‘Kommersant’ wrote occurred” (1news.az/world/20080905113732180.html).
Vienna, September 5 – With Iran’s declaration that it opposes the construction of any undersea pipelines in the Caspian on “ecological grounds” and thus will block any delimitation of the seabed that allows for them and Baku’s decision not to back the West’s push NABUCCO project, Moscow can claim its first major political victory from its invasion of Georgia.
These actions mean that the Russian government will now have full and uncontested control over pipelines between the Caspian basin and the West which pass through Russian territory and will be able either directly or through its clients like the PKK to disrupt the only routes such as Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan that bypass the Russian Federation.
That does not mean, of course, that Moscow now has effectively reestablished its control over the states of this region – all of them have other interests besides oil and gas – but it does mean that Russia has won a major victory and the West, which all too often in recent years has focused on oil and gas alone, has suffered a major defeat.
Yesterday, Mehti Safari, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, told journalists that Tehran opposes the construction of any undersea pipelines in the Caspian because “this can bring harm to the ecology of the sea.” He noted that exporting countries can send their gas out via either the Russian Federation or Iran (www.oilru.com/news/81667/).
Given the existence of “such possibilities,” the Iranian diplomat said, “why harm” the delicate eco-system of the Caspian? But in making this statement, Tehran was underscoring its willingness to destroy any chance for the completion of the NABUCCO gas pipeline in the near term that the United States and some Western European countries have been pushing for.
And because Washington opposes the flow of hydrocarbons from the Caspian basin out through Iran, Tehran’s action in fact makes it likely that many of the oil and gas exporting countries in the region will now choose to send more or even all of their gas and oil through the Russian Federation, a longstanding geopolitical goal of Moscow’s.
The geo-economic and geo-political shifts in the Caucasus as a result of Russian actions in Georgia were even more in evidence during US Vice President Dick Cheney’s brief visit to the Azerbaijani capital. According to Russian media reports, it did not go well from either a protocol or a substantive perspective (www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1020720).
First, Cheney was not met at the airport by either President Ilham Aliyev or Prime Minister Artur Rasi-zade. Instead, he was met by the first vice premier and the foreign minister. After that, he was not immediately received by the president but rather had meetings with officials of the BP-Azerbaijan oil company and the American embassy.
Then, officials in the office of the Azerbaijani president told Moscow’s “Kommersant,” Cheney was sufficiently displeased with his conversation with President Aliyev that “as a result he even refused to visit the ceremonial dinner in his honor” that the Azerbaijan leader had organized.
On the one hand, Aliyev indicated that he was not prepared to talk about going ahead with NABUCCO until Baku completes its negotiations with Russia’s Gazprom or indeed do anything else to ”support Washington and [thus] get into an argument with Moscow” given what has happened in Georgia.
And on the other, immediately after the Aliyev-Cheney meeting, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev telephoned the Azerbaijani president, an action which Kremlin sources told the Moscow paper provided Medvedev with the opportunity to explain Russia’s policies and to discuss the possibilities for the Russian and Azerbaijani presidents to meet “in the near future.”
At one level, of course, all this reflects the continuation of President Aliyev’s commitment to what he and his government call “a balanced foreign policy,” one that seeks to navigate between Moscow and the West by avoiding offending either and seeking to develop strong ties with both.
But at another, the way in which the media have covered Vice President Cheney’s visit suggests that if Baku’s policy remains a balanced one, the balance is rather different than it was before Moscow demonstrated with its invasion of Georgia and its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia that the game has changed.
Indeed, in reporting this visit, one Baku newspaper used as its headline today words that show just how much has changed over the last month. “It is not accidental,” the paper pointed out that just after the American vice president left Aliyev’s office the Russian president called (www.echo-az.com/politica09.shtml).
UPDATE on September 6: A source at the US Embassy in Baku told 1News.az that a report in Moscow’s “Kommersant” yesterday on the visit of Vice President Dick Cheney to Baku was factually incorrect. The American official did take part in a dinner and left the Azerbaijani capital “very satisfied,” the souce added. “ I understand,” the unnamed official said, “that Russian mass media want to give what they would like to have seen happen for what really did, but nothing that ‘Kommersant’ wrote occurred” (1news.az/world/20080905113732180.html).
Window on Eurasia: Appointed Governors Less Well Known to Russians than Elected Ones
Paul Goble
Vienna, September 5 – Regional and republic heads appointed by Moscow are likely to be less well known among the population and, when known, often less well liked that those elected by the people, yet another negative indication of the negative impact Vladimir Putin had on the state of democracy in the Russian Federation.
At the end of August, the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion (VTsIOM), a polling agency known for its close ties to the Kremlin, surveyed residents in 13 regions whose top officials appointed by then-president Putin between 2005 and 2007. The results are striking and could set the stage for making these posts again subject to election.
According to a report in “Vedomosti” this week, the VTsIOM survey found that “the population does not know its own governors” and that the attitude of the population to them “is not always linked to the state of the economy,” a sharp contrast to what many in Moscow have regularly insisted (www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article.shtml?2008/09/03/159763).
The least well-known of the appointed governors was Valery Potapenko, who heads the Nenets Autonomous District. One quarter of the residents of that region could not recall his name when asked by VTsIOM’s pollsters, and another fifth gave the wrong name altogether – for a total of almost half of the population.
The situation in Sakhalin and Kamchatka, the paper continued, is roughly the same, according to the VTsIOM figures. Often those whom the population gave higher marks to were among the better known, the paper said, but “disliked governors are not always the least known.”
The governors of in the Amur and Kaliningrad regions are known but disliked.
The socio-economic situation in the regions and republics play a role in this, VTsIOM’s Valery Fedorov told the Moscow paper, with governors getting credit for good times and blame for bad ones. But “economics does not influence public opinion everywhere,” he said, noting that residents also evaluate governors in terms of crime and corruption.
The VTsIOM poll highlights one of the ways in which Putin subverted Russia’s fitful transformation into a more open and democratic society. But Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a Moscow specialist on Russian elites, provides evidence for those who argue that Russia could still turn in a democratic direction.
At a media briefing last week reported in the current issue of “Velikaya Epokha,” the sociologist said that there has been a dramatic decline in the percentage of Russian officials who earlier served in the Soviet nomenklatura, a decline that could open the way for a break with the past (www.epochtimes.ru/content/view/19154/3/).
Under Russian President Boris Yeltsin, approximately 50 percent of senior government officials – including Yeltsin himself – had been members of the Soviet nomenklatura. Under Putin, their percentage fell from 38 percent in 2000-2001 to 33 percent in 2007. And now under President Dmitry Medvedev, the figure has fallen to 16.7 percent.
Some of this decline is simply the product of the passing of time. After all, most nomenklatura officials were in their 50s or even older, and it has been 17 years since the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russian Federation emerged. But Kryshtanovskaya argued that this trend is “extraordinarily important.”
With the departure of these Soviet officials, she said, there has been a gradual decline in the impact of the Soviet mentality and Soviet ways of making decisions and implementing policy. But at the same time, she said, no one should expect a major change in the way Moscow officials do business over the next few years as compared to the Putin era.
Even though there are now fewer former nomenklatura workers, she pointed out, the force structures on which Putin’s power has been based are still dominated by them, and the political elite which Kryshtanovskaya studies has not changed as much as this statistic might suggest: 80 percent of it under Medvedev were put in place by Putin.
Vienna, September 5 – Regional and republic heads appointed by Moscow are likely to be less well known among the population and, when known, often less well liked that those elected by the people, yet another negative indication of the negative impact Vladimir Putin had on the state of democracy in the Russian Federation.
At the end of August, the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion (VTsIOM), a polling agency known for its close ties to the Kremlin, surveyed residents in 13 regions whose top officials appointed by then-president Putin between 2005 and 2007. The results are striking and could set the stage for making these posts again subject to election.
According to a report in “Vedomosti” this week, the VTsIOM survey found that “the population does not know its own governors” and that the attitude of the population to them “is not always linked to the state of the economy,” a sharp contrast to what many in Moscow have regularly insisted (www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article.shtml?2008/09/03/159763).
The least well-known of the appointed governors was Valery Potapenko, who heads the Nenets Autonomous District. One quarter of the residents of that region could not recall his name when asked by VTsIOM’s pollsters, and another fifth gave the wrong name altogether – for a total of almost half of the population.
The situation in Sakhalin and Kamchatka, the paper continued, is roughly the same, according to the VTsIOM figures. Often those whom the population gave higher marks to were among the better known, the paper said, but “disliked governors are not always the least known.”
The governors of in the Amur and Kaliningrad regions are known but disliked.
The socio-economic situation in the regions and republics play a role in this, VTsIOM’s Valery Fedorov told the Moscow paper, with governors getting credit for good times and blame for bad ones. But “economics does not influence public opinion everywhere,” he said, noting that residents also evaluate governors in terms of crime and corruption.
The VTsIOM poll highlights one of the ways in which Putin subverted Russia’s fitful transformation into a more open and democratic society. But Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a Moscow specialist on Russian elites, provides evidence for those who argue that Russia could still turn in a democratic direction.
At a media briefing last week reported in the current issue of “Velikaya Epokha,” the sociologist said that there has been a dramatic decline in the percentage of Russian officials who earlier served in the Soviet nomenklatura, a decline that could open the way for a break with the past (www.epochtimes.ru/content/view/19154/3/).
Under Russian President Boris Yeltsin, approximately 50 percent of senior government officials – including Yeltsin himself – had been members of the Soviet nomenklatura. Under Putin, their percentage fell from 38 percent in 2000-2001 to 33 percent in 2007. And now under President Dmitry Medvedev, the figure has fallen to 16.7 percent.
Some of this decline is simply the product of the passing of time. After all, most nomenklatura officials were in their 50s or even older, and it has been 17 years since the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russian Federation emerged. But Kryshtanovskaya argued that this trend is “extraordinarily important.”
With the departure of these Soviet officials, she said, there has been a gradual decline in the impact of the Soviet mentality and Soviet ways of making decisions and implementing policy. But at the same time, she said, no one should expect a major change in the way Moscow officials do business over the next few years as compared to the Putin era.
Even though there are now fewer former nomenklatura workers, she pointed out, the force structures on which Putin’s power has been based are still dominated by them, and the political elite which Kryshtanovskaya studies has not changed as much as this statistic might suggest: 80 percent of it under Medvedev were put in place by Putin.
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