Paul Goble
Vienna, February 1 – When Muslims rioted in French cities, Russian officials comforted themselves with the observation that such things could not happen in their country because Russian Islam is different. But now a leading Moscow specialist on Islam argues that this self-confident assumption may no longer be entirely justified.
Aleksandr Ignatenko, the president of the Moscow Institute of Religion and Politics and a member of the Russian president’s Council on Ties with Religious Organizations, says that the situation with regard to Islam inside Russia increasingly resembles that of the communities of the faithful in European countries (russianews.ru/newspaper/21160/21227/).
And he implies in the course of this interview which was posted online at the end of last week that Russians are likely to respond as Europeans have, not only restricting immigration and tightening government control over Muslim organizations of all kinds but also becoming more self-conscious of their own national, religious and cultural identities.
Asked whether what is taking place in Europe now represents a kind of Crusade in reverse, an effort by Muslims to do to Christians what Christians once tried to do to them, Ignatenko said he would prefer describe what is taking place as “the Muslim mastering [“osvoyenie”] of Europe.”
That process consists of three distinct “flows,” the Moscow expert says. The first of these – and it is “the most obvious” -- involved “the demographic expansion of the Islamic world into Europe,” the increasing number of “Muslim immigrants and naturalized Muslims in the populations of various European countries.”
The second is “the political and military-political expansion of the countries of the Near and Middle East into Europe.” These countries use their diasporas to put pressure on European countries to advance their own interests and that of the Muslim world. And some of them may provide bases for those who conduct terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere.
“As a rule,” Ignatenko continues, “the terrorists from among Muslims living in Europe achieve geopolitical tasks which are set in the capitals of Arab and other Islamic capitals. The reaction of European regimes to such attacks is increasingly presented as “the persecution of Muslims,” which “in its turn leads to the radicalization of part of European Muslims.”
And the third “flow of the Islamic ‘mastering’ of Europe consists of religious expansion,” both by means of direct missionary work and conversion where that works and by forcible jihadist tactics, including violence, where such softer and more peaceful means for the spread of Islam do not.
“Paradoxically” however, the Moscow scholar, the increasing role that Islam plays on the continent is “leading to a growth of European self-consciousness and to a clarification of just what Europe is in a cultural and even civilizational sense,” something that informs but may prove more important than the direct restrictions on Muslims some governments there have imposed.
The situation with regard to Muslims in Russia is different, Ignatenko says, but not as different as it was only a few years ago. Islam is “one of the traditional religions of Russia and as such it does not and cannot represent” the kind of danger it represents for the countries of Europe.
But there is now a problem with Muslims in Russia that has parallels with the challenges they pose in Europe. “A religious expansion from foreign Islamic centers – Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other countries like Libya, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey, each of which has its own form of Islam, is taking place among Russian Muslims,” Ignatenko says.
And that is leading to “a collision” between the values of “traditional” Islam in Russia and the imported variants. Ignatenko cites with approval the words of Valiulla Yakupov, a Muslim leader in Kazan, who said “For Arab nomads, perhaps, Wahhabism is a good thing, but for Europeans and the Tatars consider themselves Europeans it is completely unacceptable.”
Ignatenko points out that this “religious expansion” inside Russia is “combined with political and military-political” expansion in the southern part of the country. And although he does not refer to it here, these expansions are being reinforced by a demographic one powered by higher growth rates among Muslims within Russia and the influx of Muslim labor from abroad.
Opposing this, the presidential advisor says, is “a vital necessity” for Russia, and he urges more support for “traditional Russian Islam.” But if he is right about the situation in Europe and the increasing convergence with it of the situation in Russia, such support may slow but will not stop the Islamic “mastery” of Russia or a nationalist reaction among non-Muslims there.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Window on Eurasia: Ethnic Russians Now Being Assimilated by Other Nations
Paul Goble
Vienna, February 1 – For most of their history, Russians, because of the power of their state and the attractiveness of their high culture, assimilated others. But over the last century, members of this nationality have been assimilated by others, both in the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union and now in the independent successor states as well as further afield.
This shift from a nation doing the assimilating to one being assimilated, especially given the demographic trends within that nation, fuels one of the deepest fears of many Russians helps to explain the influence of Lev Gumilyev’s ideas on “chimera nationalities,” government support for compatriot programs, and slogans like “Russia for the Russians.”
But few statistics or academic studies are available – the issue is just too politically explosive for that – and most discussions are confined to the pages of Russian nationalist journals and are cast in such apocalyptic language that few people not immediately involved take them seriously.
An exception to this is provided by commentator Aleksandr Sivov in an essay posted online last Friday entitled “Russians without Russia,” in which he discusses the assimilation of ethnic Russians beyond the borders first of the USSR and now of the Russian Federation more in sorrow than in anger (www.apn-spb.ru/publications/article4797.htm).
Sivov stresses that his subject is not the emigrants who moved to the US, Australia or Israel, but rather about ethnic Russians who “have lived as compact groups over the course of generations on their own land” which first after 1917 and then after 1991 found themselves within the borders of another country.
In addition to parts of the former Soviet republics, he continues, ethnic Russians lived as distinct and historical communities in Bialystok, which is now in Poland, the Lemko region in north eastern Slovakia, the Danube delta and adjoining regions of Romania, and the Kars district of Turkey.
Sivov writes that he has visited all these places as well as many former Soviet republics and that, in the course of his travels, he has “encountered all stages of the assimilation of the Russian people” by other nations, a trend for which he blames Soviet ideology, the attitude of the Russian government, and the impact of the policies of the governments where Russians live
Both because of the imperatives of the civil war following the 1917 revolution and the internationalist ideology of those who won it, the Soviet leadership’s “lack of interest in the problems of the Russian people living beyond the borders of the USSR continued for a long time.”
Moreover, he continues, “to one degree or another, the assimilation of Russians took place also within the USSR.’ In non-Russian republics, many Russians especially in rural areas did not learn Russian well at school or use it in their daily life because they were surrounded by people speaking another language.
After the demise of the USSR, these “assimilationist processes sharply increased,” with what Sivov says is the “first stage of assimilation” being very much in evidence in Ukraine. There, ethnic Russians are gradually losing their language and knowledge of Russian history as a result of Kyiv’s educational policies and Moscow’s own approach to this community.
On the one hand, young people find that they can more easily get ahead if they master Ukrainian and identify with Ukraine, especially since questions about Russia and Russianness are viewed as an unacceptable form of nationalism or even a variety of fascism, attitudes that over time discourage many from asking them.
And on the other, Sivov points out, the Russian government has contributed to this process, with its embassy personnel often telling Russians there to learn Ukrainian in order to overcome difficulties and Moscow itself acting as if the only salvation for ethnic Russians in Ukraine is “Suitcase. The railroad station. Russia.”
What Sivov calls “the second stage” of the assimilation of the Russian people abroad is on display even among Russians who still continue to view themselves as Russians. They know perhaps 200 to 300 words of the language and may appear to be Russians during a brief conversation, but they lack the skills to read or comprehend more.
The third stage is shown among Russians in Romania and Poland. Many in these communities find it difficult even to conduct a simple conversation in the language. Indeed, the only people left in these places who speak Russian well, he says, are priests of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The fourth stage is shown in the lives of the ethnic Russians who live in the Kars region of Turkey. Even the current head of the Russian Old Believer community there “does not now a word of Russian,” Sivov reports, adding that he was able to conduct a conversation with him only in English.
And the fifth stage is found among those who had been ethnic Russians in Kars but who, having moved to Istanbul and Ankara in order to find work, no longer “maintain [any] connections” with that community and are disappearing into what Sivov calls “the ‘melting pots’ of the Turkish nation.”
Sivov concludes by suggesting that the Russian regime at present is indifferent to or even supportive of the “maximum assimilation of Russians beyond its borders,” because if that happens and Russians become “Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis Estonians and so forth,” Moscow won’t have to deal with the problems of Russians abroad.
His judgment about what the Russian government wants in this area will certainly be disputed by many in the former Soviet republics and occupied Baltic States, who see the Russian government trying to help ethnic Russians there survive as communities, maintain ties with Moscow, and help promote Russia’s and not just Russian interests where they live.
But Sivov’s words are important, however tendentious and even wrong they will strike many, because they indicate that many Russians in Russia fear that ethnic Russians living outside of the Russian Federation will not maintain that identity into the future and that Moscow, whatever it appears to others, is not doing enough to try to reverse that trend.
Vienna, February 1 – For most of their history, Russians, because of the power of their state and the attractiveness of their high culture, assimilated others. But over the last century, members of this nationality have been assimilated by others, both in the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union and now in the independent successor states as well as further afield.
This shift from a nation doing the assimilating to one being assimilated, especially given the demographic trends within that nation, fuels one of the deepest fears of many Russians helps to explain the influence of Lev Gumilyev’s ideas on “chimera nationalities,” government support for compatriot programs, and slogans like “Russia for the Russians.”
But few statistics or academic studies are available – the issue is just too politically explosive for that – and most discussions are confined to the pages of Russian nationalist journals and are cast in such apocalyptic language that few people not immediately involved take them seriously.
An exception to this is provided by commentator Aleksandr Sivov in an essay posted online last Friday entitled “Russians without Russia,” in which he discusses the assimilation of ethnic Russians beyond the borders first of the USSR and now of the Russian Federation more in sorrow than in anger (www.apn-spb.ru/publications/article4797.htm).
Sivov stresses that his subject is not the emigrants who moved to the US, Australia or Israel, but rather about ethnic Russians who “have lived as compact groups over the course of generations on their own land” which first after 1917 and then after 1991 found themselves within the borders of another country.
In addition to parts of the former Soviet republics, he continues, ethnic Russians lived as distinct and historical communities in Bialystok, which is now in Poland, the Lemko region in north eastern Slovakia, the Danube delta and adjoining regions of Romania, and the Kars district of Turkey.
Sivov writes that he has visited all these places as well as many former Soviet republics and that, in the course of his travels, he has “encountered all stages of the assimilation of the Russian people” by other nations, a trend for which he blames Soviet ideology, the attitude of the Russian government, and the impact of the policies of the governments where Russians live
Both because of the imperatives of the civil war following the 1917 revolution and the internationalist ideology of those who won it, the Soviet leadership’s “lack of interest in the problems of the Russian people living beyond the borders of the USSR continued for a long time.”
Moreover, he continues, “to one degree or another, the assimilation of Russians took place also within the USSR.’ In non-Russian republics, many Russians especially in rural areas did not learn Russian well at school or use it in their daily life because they were surrounded by people speaking another language.
After the demise of the USSR, these “assimilationist processes sharply increased,” with what Sivov says is the “first stage of assimilation” being very much in evidence in Ukraine. There, ethnic Russians are gradually losing their language and knowledge of Russian history as a result of Kyiv’s educational policies and Moscow’s own approach to this community.
On the one hand, young people find that they can more easily get ahead if they master Ukrainian and identify with Ukraine, especially since questions about Russia and Russianness are viewed as an unacceptable form of nationalism or even a variety of fascism, attitudes that over time discourage many from asking them.
And on the other, Sivov points out, the Russian government has contributed to this process, with its embassy personnel often telling Russians there to learn Ukrainian in order to overcome difficulties and Moscow itself acting as if the only salvation for ethnic Russians in Ukraine is “Suitcase. The railroad station. Russia.”
What Sivov calls “the second stage” of the assimilation of the Russian people abroad is on display even among Russians who still continue to view themselves as Russians. They know perhaps 200 to 300 words of the language and may appear to be Russians during a brief conversation, but they lack the skills to read or comprehend more.
The third stage is shown among Russians in Romania and Poland. Many in these communities find it difficult even to conduct a simple conversation in the language. Indeed, the only people left in these places who speak Russian well, he says, are priests of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The fourth stage is shown in the lives of the ethnic Russians who live in the Kars region of Turkey. Even the current head of the Russian Old Believer community there “does not now a word of Russian,” Sivov reports, adding that he was able to conduct a conversation with him only in English.
And the fifth stage is found among those who had been ethnic Russians in Kars but who, having moved to Istanbul and Ankara in order to find work, no longer “maintain [any] connections” with that community and are disappearing into what Sivov calls “the ‘melting pots’ of the Turkish nation.”
Sivov concludes by suggesting that the Russian regime at present is indifferent to or even supportive of the “maximum assimilation of Russians beyond its borders,” because if that happens and Russians become “Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis Estonians and so forth,” Moscow won’t have to deal with the problems of Russians abroad.
His judgment about what the Russian government wants in this area will certainly be disputed by many in the former Soviet republics and occupied Baltic States, who see the Russian government trying to help ethnic Russians there survive as communities, maintain ties with Moscow, and help promote Russia’s and not just Russian interests where they live.
But Sivov’s words are important, however tendentious and even wrong they will strike many, because they indicate that many Russians in Russia fear that ethnic Russians living outside of the Russian Federation will not maintain that identity into the future and that Moscow, whatever it appears to others, is not doing enough to try to reverse that trend.
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