Paul Goble
Vienna, October 3 – An ever larger share of those involved in Russian neo-Nazi attacks on ethnic and religious minorities in that country are below the age of 21, a development that Moscow experts say is “acquiring ever more threatening dimensions” and that suggests the number and violence of such attacks is likely to grow.
Two articles in yesterday’s “Novyye izvestiya,” one on the increasing number of extremist crimes committed by young Russians and a second on the rising tide of aggression displayed by Russian school children to their teachers and each other, provide a disturbing picture of a youth culture headed in the wrong direction
In the first article, journalists Yevgeny Zubchenko and Mikhail Zlatkovsky not that last week, several Duma deputies expressed “particular concern about manifestations of extremism among young people” in the Russian Federation when officials said that nationalists between 16 and 20 had committed 17 murders for ethnic and religious reasons in the first half of 2008.
But the problem, the two journalists say, is far more serious than Russian officials acknowledged. And they point to a single case currently being heard in a Moscow court, in which only one of the 13 accused was an adult when they are charged with killing 20 and trying to kill 12 more for ethnic reasons (www.newizv.ru/news/2008-10-02/99004).
Militia officers involved in that case said that the school system had failed to socialize these young people, adding that “not the least role” in the rise of such violence against ethnic groups and religious minorities is no played by television and the Internet,” where violence is often celebrated rather than condemned.
Sergey Komkov, the president of the All-Russian Foundation for Education, agreed. He told the Moscow paper that in his view, schools had almost completely stopped providing the kind of moral instruction that they used to provide, a failing that has been exacerbated by the lack of non-political youth groups.
Unfortunately, he continued, there has been “a spontaneous process of the grouping of young people around political structures: Today, every party worthy of the name has its own young movement: United Russian, LDPR and so on.” Not surprisingly, “extremist and so-called patriotic” groups have done the same, forming youth groups to promote their agendas.
Indeed, Anna Kartashova of the Moscow Psychological Center said, the radical parties view young people as an obvious place to find support. Often, as part of the maturation process, she said, young people engage in “aggressive” actions in order to demonstrate to themselves and their world their independence.
When they are led by responsible adults, most young people find ways to outgrow that need. But when they are encouraged by irresponsible adults, she said, then there is the danger, now seen frequently in the Russian Federation, that young people will engage in violence, especially when they feel they have the support of their elders.
And in today’s Russia, Kartashova pointed out, many adults and media outlets routinely say that “Georgians or Chechens or someone others are bad.” Adults may limit themselves to saying that, but young people often will not and instead act on such messages, especially since “youths divide everything into black and white.”
The second article in yesterday’s “Novyye izvestiya” points to a rising tide of aggressiveness beyond that being directed at ethnic and religious minorities. According to the Russian interior ministry, it says, teachers are now twice as likely to be the victims of violence by pupils than pupils are of violence by teachers (www.newizv.ru/news/2008-10-02/99013/).
In many Russian schools the situation has become so bad, journalist Nina Bazhdayeva said, that “teachers are afraid of their students.” And at the same time, she reports, the number of violence clashes among students has been rising as well, reducing still further the possibility for successful instruction in the schools.
In commenting on this trend, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, the head of the Moscow Center for Psychology and Social Medicine, said that it is a mistake to blame television or computer games for what is going on. All people are “genetically” disposed to aggression, he said, but there are reasons why Russians need to be especially concerned about these trends.
The amount of aggressiveness varies among societies and over time, he pointed out, but “in times of stormy social and economic transformations” or when “social inequality generates anger and envy” as now in Russia, there is almost no chance that there will not be more aggression wherever young people are concentrated.
But the most widely proposed response – draconian punishments for any engaging in such actions – will not always work with young people, Tatyana Mukha, a psychologist at the Moscow Center for Education in Development, said. Instead, “punishment causes new aggression,” yet another explanation for aggressive extremism among Russian young people.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Window on Eurasia: Today’s Stalin Cult in Russia More Insidious than Late Soviet Era One, Analysts Say
Paul Goble
Vienna, October 3 – The cult of Stalin that has emerged in the Russian Federation over the last decade is more dangerous than its Soviet-era predecessor not only because it celebrates his crimes rather than ignoring them but also because it is finding an increasingly enthusiastic and almost completely uncritical audience among the young.
Christians have a special responsibility to counter this trend by promoting the restoration of historical memory among Russians, according to speakers at a Moscow conference on “Spiritual Resistance in the Church and in Society” organized by the Community of Orthodox Brotherhoods (www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=23080).
The organizers asked participants to address three basic questions: Why after the opening of archives in the early 1990s did Russians not develop immunity” to the evil of Stalinism? “Why did our people turn out not prepared to do what, for example, Germans were able to do? And how can those who experienced Stalin’s rule find “a common language” with the young?
Irina Karatsuba, a historian at Moscow State University, told the meeting this week that Russia had lost 137 million lives during the 20th century from wars, revolutions and so on. Of that number, she continued, “the repressed formed a not insignificant fraction.” But today, all too few people are focusing on that.
Instead, she said, “surprising things are taking place in our time concerning recollections about this period of our history.” Indeed, she insisted, “now we are moving backwards in comparison even with how Khrushchev understood repressions.” In his time, Soviet textbooks “hid” what had happened. But now Stalin’s terror is presented as not only necessary but useful.
“In certain new textbooks,” she continued, the Soviet dictator’s actions “are presented as ‘an effective instrument without which industrialization and collectivization would have been impossible and without which the country would not have won the war and preserved its sovereignty – and [for the Kremlin and many ordinary Russians] sovereignty is ‘our all.’”
According to Karatsuba, the reason this has happened is that in the 1990s, “the root of [this] evil was not pulled out, the people did not repent, and there was not a Nurnberg Process against communism.” But she expressed the hope that “now it is still not too late” to do so and to ensure that Russians will be able “to distinguish good from evil.”
A second speaker, educator Yevgeny Knorre argued that “the waves of the revival of love for Stalin at the end of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s and now in the 2000s … are connected with periods of ‘the crushing of hopes’ and stagnation” – Brezhnev’s “zastoy” in the first case and Vladimir Putin’s “stabilization” in the second.
In such times, which often are characterized by spiritual emptiness, people are looking for a father figure who can take care of them and lead them out of their difficulties, Knorre said. And he suggested that the Russian Orthodox Church must take a more active role in countering this emptiness much as the Catholic Church has done in Italy.
Oleg Ushakov, a lawyer who spoke third, agreed but suggested that many people in the Orthodox Church are themselves attracted to the idea of a little father tsar and remain attached to “a terrible monarchical ideal” which itself “is also connected with a loss of historical memory and spiritual understanding.”
A fourth speaker, identified by Blagovest-Info.ru only as “an elderly artist from Yekaterinburg whose family was “subjected to repressions,” said she is shocked by the “nostalgia” for Stalin among his victims, but she added that she is even more “horrified” by school texts that seek to “justify” what Stalin did.
And a fifth speaker, Aleksandr Arkhangelsky, identified only as “not the television announcer,” said that these textbooks which argue that Stalin did the right thing are especially dangerous because in Russia today “there are already many young people who are ready to become active bearers of evil.”
“If the Church does not interfere,” he continued, “then the government will again make use of its ideological and repressive machine,” an action that could mean that many of the horrors of the 20th century in the Soviet Union will be repeated in the 21st century in the Russian Federation.
Vienna, October 3 – The cult of Stalin that has emerged in the Russian Federation over the last decade is more dangerous than its Soviet-era predecessor not only because it celebrates his crimes rather than ignoring them but also because it is finding an increasingly enthusiastic and almost completely uncritical audience among the young.
Christians have a special responsibility to counter this trend by promoting the restoration of historical memory among Russians, according to speakers at a Moscow conference on “Spiritual Resistance in the Church and in Society” organized by the Community of Orthodox Brotherhoods (www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=23080).
The organizers asked participants to address three basic questions: Why after the opening of archives in the early 1990s did Russians not develop immunity” to the evil of Stalinism? “Why did our people turn out not prepared to do what, for example, Germans were able to do? And how can those who experienced Stalin’s rule find “a common language” with the young?
Irina Karatsuba, a historian at Moscow State University, told the meeting this week that Russia had lost 137 million lives during the 20th century from wars, revolutions and so on. Of that number, she continued, “the repressed formed a not insignificant fraction.” But today, all too few people are focusing on that.
Instead, she said, “surprising things are taking place in our time concerning recollections about this period of our history.” Indeed, she insisted, “now we are moving backwards in comparison even with how Khrushchev understood repressions.” In his time, Soviet textbooks “hid” what had happened. But now Stalin’s terror is presented as not only necessary but useful.
“In certain new textbooks,” she continued, the Soviet dictator’s actions “are presented as ‘an effective instrument without which industrialization and collectivization would have been impossible and without which the country would not have won the war and preserved its sovereignty – and [for the Kremlin and many ordinary Russians] sovereignty is ‘our all.’”
According to Karatsuba, the reason this has happened is that in the 1990s, “the root of [this] evil was not pulled out, the people did not repent, and there was not a Nurnberg Process against communism.” But she expressed the hope that “now it is still not too late” to do so and to ensure that Russians will be able “to distinguish good from evil.”
A second speaker, educator Yevgeny Knorre argued that “the waves of the revival of love for Stalin at the end of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s and now in the 2000s … are connected with periods of ‘the crushing of hopes’ and stagnation” – Brezhnev’s “zastoy” in the first case and Vladimir Putin’s “stabilization” in the second.
In such times, which often are characterized by spiritual emptiness, people are looking for a father figure who can take care of them and lead them out of their difficulties, Knorre said. And he suggested that the Russian Orthodox Church must take a more active role in countering this emptiness much as the Catholic Church has done in Italy.
Oleg Ushakov, a lawyer who spoke third, agreed but suggested that many people in the Orthodox Church are themselves attracted to the idea of a little father tsar and remain attached to “a terrible monarchical ideal” which itself “is also connected with a loss of historical memory and spiritual understanding.”
A fourth speaker, identified by Blagovest-Info.ru only as “an elderly artist from Yekaterinburg whose family was “subjected to repressions,” said she is shocked by the “nostalgia” for Stalin among his victims, but she added that she is even more “horrified” by school texts that seek to “justify” what Stalin did.
And a fifth speaker, Aleksandr Arkhangelsky, identified only as “not the television announcer,” said that these textbooks which argue that Stalin did the right thing are especially dangerous because in Russia today “there are already many young people who are ready to become active bearers of evil.”
“If the Church does not interfere,” he continued, “then the government will again make use of its ideological and repressive machine,” an action that could mean that many of the horrors of the 20th century in the Soviet Union will be repeated in the 21st century in the Russian Federation.
Window on Eurasia: Kremlin’s Fight against Extremism Threatens Basic Freedoms, Activists Say
Paul Goble
Vienna, October 3 – As he has before, President Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia must do more to fight extremism, but human rights activists both inside the Russian Federation and abroad argue that this effort increasingly constitutes a greater immediate threat to the fundamental rights there than do any of the groups Moscow has identified as “extremist.”
In a speech to senior officers this week, Medvedev said that the interior ministry and other Russian agencies must “devote particular attention to the struggle with extremism and nationalism,” arguing that recent sentences against those who violate existing law in this area should be “a serious lesson” to all (www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=212578&cid=1%20).
But hearings in the Duma last week and this suggest that the Kremlin intends to so broaden the laws governing the struggle against extremism that almost any Russian citizen could be charged with that “crime,” if the authorities chose to do so, a less than encouraging indication of what “the rule of law,” to which Medvedev is committed, will in fact mean.
Responding to the president’s declarations, the Duma’s Security Committee has decided to “simplify and make still more effective [Moscow’s] struggle with ‘extremism’” by allowing prosecutors to declare a document existing in a single copy “extremist” and to close opposition media without judicial review (kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2008/10/02/61352.shtml).
Committee members said that “the number of extremist acts in Russia had grown without stopping since 2004,” a statement at odds with the Russian government’s own claims but one that they used to justify extending the sweep of anti-extremist legislation to punish not only those who engage in extremism but also those who may be thinking about doing so.
To create such a prophylactic system, the deputies proposed allowing officials to classify a social or religious group as extremist on the basis of a single warning by executive branch officials rather than, as now, only on the basis of a hearing at which the group concerned could bring evidence against such charges.
Moreover, if the amendments the committee members propose go through, groups as innocent as the seminaries of Russian Old Believers could fall on the extremist list maintained by the government if any official chose to denounce them, the possibility of which by itself represents a serious form of intimidation against all groups.
And in addition, the amendments, which have the support of pro-Kremlin United Russia deputies, would require all religious organizations to supply officials with a full description of their membership and activities, demands that would likely drive many of these groups underground.
And perhaps more seriously of all, the Duma’s Security Committee would allow prosecutors and other executive branch officials to decide what is “extremist,” an arrangement that would preclude even the limited judicial review those so charged now have and make it virtually impossible for any group the regime does not like to defend itself.
Commenting on these proposals, Lev Ponomarev, the head of the For Human Rights organization and one of Russia’s leading activists in this area, said that the amendments will make it easier for prosecutors to denounce “anyone they want” as extremist, something that “no one either under Stalin or the tsar was allowed.”
And Boris Sokolov, a Moscow professor and activist who recently lost his job because of differences with the Kremlin said that these amendments mean that “Soviet times have returned.” And he said that following these steps, he expects that “soon will begin mass persecution of those who think differently.”
(While political dissidents may well be the objects of official repression in the near future, they are not going to be the first. Over the weekend, interior ministry OMON troops went on a rampage in the city of Skopinsk in Ryazan oblast, attacking Uzbeks and other non-Russians in factories there (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48E4A32459643.html).)
Meanwhile, the widely respected international religious rights watchdog Forum 18 concludes in its annual survey that “the gravest current threat to freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Russia comes from the federal government’s approach to combating religious extremism” (www.forum18.org/Archive.php?query=&religion=all&country=10).
Vienna, October 3 – As he has before, President Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia must do more to fight extremism, but human rights activists both inside the Russian Federation and abroad argue that this effort increasingly constitutes a greater immediate threat to the fundamental rights there than do any of the groups Moscow has identified as “extremist.”
In a speech to senior officers this week, Medvedev said that the interior ministry and other Russian agencies must “devote particular attention to the struggle with extremism and nationalism,” arguing that recent sentences against those who violate existing law in this area should be “a serious lesson” to all (www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=212578&cid=1%20).
But hearings in the Duma last week and this suggest that the Kremlin intends to so broaden the laws governing the struggle against extremism that almost any Russian citizen could be charged with that “crime,” if the authorities chose to do so, a less than encouraging indication of what “the rule of law,” to which Medvedev is committed, will in fact mean.
Responding to the president’s declarations, the Duma’s Security Committee has decided to “simplify and make still more effective [Moscow’s] struggle with ‘extremism’” by allowing prosecutors to declare a document existing in a single copy “extremist” and to close opposition media without judicial review (kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2008/10/02/61352.shtml).
Committee members said that “the number of extremist acts in Russia had grown without stopping since 2004,” a statement at odds with the Russian government’s own claims but one that they used to justify extending the sweep of anti-extremist legislation to punish not only those who engage in extremism but also those who may be thinking about doing so.
To create such a prophylactic system, the deputies proposed allowing officials to classify a social or religious group as extremist on the basis of a single warning by executive branch officials rather than, as now, only on the basis of a hearing at which the group concerned could bring evidence against such charges.
Moreover, if the amendments the committee members propose go through, groups as innocent as the seminaries of Russian Old Believers could fall on the extremist list maintained by the government if any official chose to denounce them, the possibility of which by itself represents a serious form of intimidation against all groups.
And in addition, the amendments, which have the support of pro-Kremlin United Russia deputies, would require all religious organizations to supply officials with a full description of their membership and activities, demands that would likely drive many of these groups underground.
And perhaps more seriously of all, the Duma’s Security Committee would allow prosecutors and other executive branch officials to decide what is “extremist,” an arrangement that would preclude even the limited judicial review those so charged now have and make it virtually impossible for any group the regime does not like to defend itself.
Commenting on these proposals, Lev Ponomarev, the head of the For Human Rights organization and one of Russia’s leading activists in this area, said that the amendments will make it easier for prosecutors to denounce “anyone they want” as extremist, something that “no one either under Stalin or the tsar was allowed.”
And Boris Sokolov, a Moscow professor and activist who recently lost his job because of differences with the Kremlin said that these amendments mean that “Soviet times have returned.” And he said that following these steps, he expects that “soon will begin mass persecution of those who think differently.”
(While political dissidents may well be the objects of official repression in the near future, they are not going to be the first. Over the weekend, interior ministry OMON troops went on a rampage in the city of Skopinsk in Ryazan oblast, attacking Uzbeks and other non-Russians in factories there (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48E4A32459643.html).)
Meanwhile, the widely respected international religious rights watchdog Forum 18 concludes in its annual survey that “the gravest current threat to freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Russia comes from the federal government’s approach to combating religious extremism” (www.forum18.org/Archive.php?query=&religion=all&country=10).
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