Window on Eurasia Shorts for October 4 – Non-Georgian Items

Below are a few news items from the last week about developments in the post-Soviet space that have been overshadowed by the Georgian events but that merit attention.

RUSSIAN STOCK MARKET FALLS BY NEARLY 50 PERCENT IN THIRD QUARTER…
As a result of the war in Georgia, declines in the price of oil and the flight of capital from developing countries as a result of the worldwide financial panic, the Russian stock exchange index fell by 47.8 percent in the third quarter, far more than any other equities market in the world (grani.ru/Politics/Russia/Cabinet/m.142167.html).

… AND MANY ECONOMISTS SAY MOSCOW HAS ONLY ITSELF TO BLAME. Andrei Illarionov, former Kremlin advisor and president of the Moscow Institute of Economic Analysis, says that the Russian authorities are to blame for most of the decline because of the way in which they have managed the Russian economy over the last ten years (www.barentsobserver.com/russia-to-blame-for-russian-crisis.4514847-16149.html). Other economists have echoed his view, arguing that “the consequences of the [current] crisis can be increased as a result of defects in the country’s economic and financial policies” (www.ng.ru/economics/2008-10-03/1_tezisy.html?mthree=1).

MOSCOW REPORTEDLY MOVES UNITS OF 58TH ARMY INTO INGUSHETIA. Ingush residents say that units of Russia’s 58th Army, which spearheaded Moscow’s invasion of Georgia, have now been shifted to Ingushetia, one of the most unstable republics in the north Caucasus (abkhazeti.info/news/1222890774.php). This report – and it has not been confirmed by Moscow – follows former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev’s call for the Russian government to intervene to stop what he calls “a slow-motion civil war” in Ingushetia (www.i-r-p.ru/page/stream-event/index-21906.html).

RUSSIA’S MUSLIMS STEP UP POLLITICAL PETITION DRIVE AFTER RAMADAN. Now that Ramadan is over, Russia’s Muslim leaders plan to step up their drive to collect signatures on a petition calling on Moscow to give their community a greater say in Russian political life and threatening to engage in civil disobedience if their demands are not met (www.nr2.ru/moskow/199179.html).

ECOLOGISTS AGAIN WARN PUTIN ON SOCHI OLYMPICS. Three ecological organizations – the Ecological Watch on the North Caucasus, the International Social-Ecological Union and the Sochi section of the Russian Geographic Society – have warned Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that his plans for the Sochi Olympic games will do irreparable harm to the natural environment in that region (www.izbrannoe.ru/46915.html).

ETHNIC RUSSIAN AREAS POSE GREATEST DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEMS. The Russian Federation will never be able to overcome its massive demographic problems unless low fertility rates and increased mortality among people in predominantly ethnic Russian regions is addressed first, according to Leonid Rybakovsky of the Moscow Institute of Social-Political Research (www.demographia.ru/articles_N/index.html?idR=43&idArt=1232). Among the ideas some experts have been suggesting recently are reducing pensions to force people to have more children to take care of them or even pursuing a policy designed to shift the ethnic Russian population from cities to rural areas (www.apn.ru/publications/article20758.htm). Meanwhile, Moscow has announced that it will triple aid for the numerically small peoples of the North in the hopes of holding them in those under-populated regions near the increasingly critical Arctic Ocean (www.bclass.ru/news.php?i=11&n=418).

CENTRAL ASIANS, NOT CHINESE, SAID SOURCE OF ETHNIC CRIME IN FAR EAST. Most commentaries about ethnic problems in the Russian Far East have focused on the influx of ethnic Chinese, but a new report says that crime by migrants from Central Asian countries has now shot up 1000 percent in Primorsky kray and constitutes a far bigger social problem there than do the Chinese (deita.ru/?news,,,,116016).

ECONOMIC DIFFERENTIATION SEEN SPARKING SOCIAL PROTESTS. According to polls taken by the Levada Center, Russians who feel that they have been victimized by economic reforms either directly or because they are falling ever further behind those who have benefitted from such reforms say that they are increasingly prepared to take part in social and political protests (www.levada.ru/press/2008092902.html).

UNITED RUSSIA MAY SEND COMMISSARS INTO GOVERNMENT MINISTRIES. Several political clubs of the ruling United Russia party say that it should send commissars into government ministries to ensure that government officials do what the party and the Kremlin want, a revival of a Soviet-era practice (news.politsovet.ru/n_news.asp?article=26690).

MOSCOW TO CREATE JOURNALIST GROUP TO FIGHT CORRUPTION. The Russian government plans to create a federal agency consisting of investigative journalists and professional jurists to fight corruption across the country, according to officials at a meeting of journalists in Makhachkala. The agency would give the Russian government yet another means of controlling journalistic reporting (www.fontanka.ru/2008/09/26/061/).

YOUNG PEOPLE AND THEIR PARENTS DEMONSTRATE AGAINST DRAFT … Those facing the draft, their parents and anti-draft activists staged demonstrations in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities at the start of the fall draft (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48DE21CD32E61.html). Meanwhile, the federal border service announced that it will dispense with all draftees by the end of 2008 (www.agentura.ru/?id=1222849080).

… WHILE SOCIAL CHAMBER PUSHES FOR RESTORING PRE-INDUCTION MILITARY TRAINING. Members of the Social Chamber say that Russia should re-introduce the Soviet-era practice of providing pre-induction military training in Russian schools to make it easier for draftees and volunteers to fit into military life (babr.ru/?pt=news&event=v1&IDE=47748).

‘THE OPTIMISTS ARE LEARNING ENGLISH; THE PESSIMISTS CHINESE.” The old Soviet joke had it that the optimists were learning English, the pessimists, Chinese, and the realists, the Kalashnikov. But now a study published in “Izvestiya nauki” reports that Chinese may overtake English as the foreign language of choice in Russia – but only some 50 years from now (www.nr2.ru/science/198375.html).

Window on Eurasia Shorts for October 4 – Georgian Events

Window on Eurasia Shorts for October 4 – Georgian Events

Some news items about events in and around Georgia during the last week which have attracted less attention than they deserve:

PUTIN DENOUNCES KYIV FOR SUPPLYING WEAPONS TO GEORGIA. At a press conference after meeting visiting Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Timoshenko, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called Ukraine’s provision of military equipment to Georgia a crime and said that whoever was responsible for taking that decision was “a criminal” and had made “an enormous error” (korrespondent.net/russia/603256).

MUCH NOISE, NO MOVEMENT ON RECOGNITION OF ABKHAZIA, SOUTH OSSETIA. For 24 hours, it appeared that another country – Somalia – would become the third state to recognize the two breakaway republics, but Somalia’s foreign ministry told the Georgian government that the Somali ambassador in Moscow had misspoken when he said that his country planned to extend diplomatic recognition (www.polit.ru/event/2008/10/01/friend.html and (www.annews.ru/news/detail.php?ID=169076). Meanwhile, the government of Northern Cyprus said it would recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as soon as Moscow recognized it (www.islam.ru/rus/2008-10-03/23084).

SWEDEN WILL REPRESENT GEORGIAN INTERESTS IN MOSCOW; SWITZERLAND, RUSSIAN INTERESTS IN TBILISI. Now that Russia and Georgia have broken diplomatic relations, Sweden has agreed to represent Tbilisi’s interests in the Russian Federation, and Switzerland has said it will represent Moscow’s in Georgia (grani.ru/Politics/Russia/m.142259.html and www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/news/id/1230247.html).

SAAKASHVILI SAYS HE HAS NO PLANS TO BUY MAJOR WEAPONS SYSTEMS. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili announced that he has no plans to purchase “serious new arms” for his country’s military in the wake of the conflict with the Russian Federation.
(www.sobkorr.ru/news/2/48E50F42390FF.html).

CZECH FOREIGN MINISTER CALLS RUSSIA A COLONIAL POWER … Czech Foreign Minister Karl Swartzenberg told the UN General Assembly that Russia had behaved in Georgia like “a colonizer” and must be opposed in this lest Moscow assume it could act in a similar way toward other countries (kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2008/10/01/61339.shtml).

.. AND POLISH FM SAYS MOSCOW MAY USE FORCE AGAINST UKRAINE. Speaking in Tokyo, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorsky said that Russia may use force against Ukraine in much the same way it did against Georgia even though such action would destroy the existing balance of forces in Europe (ru.redtram.com/go/168893625/n4p/716/state-and-community/).

VERY FEW ETHNIC RUSSIANS IN UKRAINE HAVE RF CITIZENSHIP. According to the Ukrainian census of 2001, only 3.2 percent of the residents of Sevastopol have Russian citizenship and less than one percent of the population in the so-called Russian-language districts did at that time. While there may have been some increase since that time, it has not been anything like that in South Ossetia or Abkhazia, experts who have examined the question say
(www.argumenti.ru/publications/7951).

MOSCOW CALLS ON CASPIAN STATES TO FORM A NEW ECONOMIC GROUP. At a meeting of the Caspian littoral states, Russian First Vice Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov called for an organization to promote economic cooperation among Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and he said that to promote this, it would be possible to create a center of Caspian economic and political research and a center for the study of bio-resources
(www.itar-tass.com/level2.html?NewsID=13133638&PageNum=0).

GEORGIANS PLAN TO MOVE STALIN S TATUE TO OCCUPATION MUSEUM. Georgia’s vice prime minister Georgy Baramidze says that the statue of Stalin in the main square of Gori, the Soviet dictator’s birthplace, will soon be moved to the occupation museum that Tbilisi intends to establish. That is where it belongs, Baramidze told journalists (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48E6617FC6C85.html).

ISRAEL, AZERBAIJAN EXPAND TIES IN WAKE OF GEORGIAN WAR. Relations between Jerusalem and Baku have intensified in several areas, Israeli ambassador to Baku Arthur Lenk said, pointing to an agreement by Azerbaijan to purchase Israeli arms and an offer by Azerbaijan to allow Israeli planes to land at Baku and Ganca to evacuate Israelis from Georgia. “Though we did not use this help,” Lenk said, “we understood Azerbaijan was a country Israel could rely on in hard times” (www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=2/a/iv/021020081).

ANKARA, BAKU MAY SEEK TO REVIVE AJARIAN AUTONOMY. According to some analysts, Turkey and Azerbaijan may seek to revive the provisions of the 1921 Treaty of Kars which gives them a voice in the status of Ajaria, something Mikhail Saakashvili has generally ignored. Were they to do so, one analyst says, the two Turkic states might ask for full autonomy for the Ajars and some autonomy for Azerbaijanis living in eastern Georgia (www.regnum.ru/news/fd-abroad/georgia/1062596.html).

SOME RUSSIANS WANT TO DISMEMBER GEORGIA FURTHER. Some Russian commentators have extended Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin’s proposals for Georgia and argued that Moscow must divide Georgia into a number of mini-states so that they will not be in a position to threaten Russia again (www.apn.ru/publications/article20753.htm).

COULD CASPIAN GAS FLOW THROUGH ARMENIA? As the fallout from the Georgian war continues to affect energy issues, some analysts have revived an idea that was first proposed 15 years ago – extending a pipeline (gas this time) through Armenia not only to link that republic more firmly with the West but also to settle the Karabakh dispute. To date, no government official has spoken out in favor of this idea (www.ia-centr.ru/expert/2457/ and
www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav093008a.shtml).

Window on Eurasia: Hard-Pressed Moscow Opposition Leaders Ask US Not to Cut Russian-Language Broadcasts

Paul Goble

Vienna, October 4 – Three leading figures of the Russian opposition are calling on Washington to reverse its decision to reduce Radio Liberty’s Russian-language broadcasts next year, lest Russian citizens, at a time when Moscow has established “practically complete control” over domestic radio and television lose a vital source of “objective information.”
In a letter to the US State Department, the foreign affairs committees and the Helsinki Commission of the Congress, and presidential candidates John McCain and Barak Obama, the three – Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Boris Nemtsov – say that reducing such broadcasts from abroad would make their struggle for freedom that much more difficult.
(The Voice of America ended Russian-language radio broadcasting earlier this summer not only as part of a general cost-cutting effort but because the affiliates in Russia on which its programming was broadcast increasingly refused, under pressure from the Russian government, to carry VOA programs.)
As a result of the actions of Vladimir Putin, they point out, “the citizens of Russia no longer have access to objective information. Opposition leaders are not allowed on the air.” And last month, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin put pressure on Ekho Moskvy, “the last major [domestic] means of mass information.” (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48E5BE1112B25.html).
“It is difficult to understand,” they write, “why, in this situation, the Broadcasting Board of Governors [BBG] is taking a decision about reducing Russian language broadcasting of Radio Liberty, which is rare voice of independent thought for hundreds of thousands of radio listeners” in the Russian Federation and neighboring countries.
And they dismiss as “illogical” the BBG’s explanation that it will use the resources now being devoted to radio broadcasting for the station’s Russian-language website. “Government censorship in Russia,” they note, “affects mostly television and radio,” while “the Internet is independent.” Moreover, they noted, most Russians do not have access to the Internet.
Commenting on this letter, Sobkorr.ru commentator Yuri Gladysh writes that “the names alone” of the authors – “a legendary dissent of Soviet times, a successful governor and vice premier who almost became president, and a young journalist and politician” – “speak for themselves.”
Even the most inexperienced political analyst, he continues, “would draw the same conclusion: things are bad in a country when such people are forced to seek support abroad” and to appeal in the case of that country “not to the current leadership but rather to candidates for the highest positions.”
But Gladysh says he found something else about all this “curious” as well. Many Russian nationalists routinely claim that the US spends “enormous sums” to carry out an information war against Russia. But in fact, Washington’s decision here suggests that in the US, as “in any normal country,” “the need to save the money of taxpayers” takes precedence.
In his view, the Sobkorr.ru analyst continues, “this fact better than all the words [of the nationalists] says that a desire ‘to harm Russia’ at a minimum is not among the priorities of American policy, if indeed, it exists at all.” But the nationalists are likely to complain about this American decision anyway, as an indication that the US does not take Russia seriously enough!
However that may be, the appeal of Bukovsky, Nemtsov and Kara-Murza is important for what it says about the direction in which Russia under Putin and Dmitry Medvedev is now moving and, especially regrettably, about the role some in the West are currently playing in that regard.
As many recent commentaries on the Russian Internet have pointed out, Vladimir Putin and his regime have so restricted freedom of information and political activity that in the words of one this week, “today in Russia there is no one left who can say ‘no’ to the powers that be, to explain where they are wrong” (newsland.ru/News/Detail/id/303687/cat/42/
But instead of helping today’s Russians to struggle against authoritarianism as the US and other Western governments did by Russian-language broadcasts in the past, these governments are now whether they realize it or not unintentionally assisting those like Putin who want to undermine the freedoms earlier Western broadcasts helped Russians like to pursue.