Paul Goble
Vienna, June 1 – A quirk in Russian law means that an official President Dmitry Medvedev has charged with combating historical falsifications has a decisive voice in determining whether the archives of the CPSU are open or not – an arrangement that one rights activist says could mean the archives needed to fight falsification may become less accessible.
In an article in the current issue of Moscow’s “New Times,” Nikita Petrov, the deputy head of the Memorial Center, says that this is one manifestation of what he describes as the “serious illness” Russia’s archives now suffer from, “the unconstitutional prohibition on access to information” (newtimes.ru/articles/detail.php?ID=1725).
Russian laws call for “systematic and regular” declassification of documents, he points out, “but this work is not being carried out” consistently and across the board. Archives belonging to state institutions that continue to exist are being declassified by their own officials, who often find reasons not to release information.
But the situation is especially serious in cases when like those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, there is no direct “heir.” In such circumstance, decisions on declassification and access are made by an inter-agency commission on state secrets, a body that since the start of 2009 has been led by Sergey Naryshkin, who is also charged with fighting historical falsification.
The Russian law on state secrets, Petrov notes, “establishes a maximum period of secrecy of 30 years, with a longer period – 50 years – only for documents of intelligence services and materials relating to the Soviet nuclear program.” If the latter exception can be justified, the former is more problematic, as recent events showed, the Memorial official says.
Not long ago, Vladimir Kozlov, the head of Russian State Archives, said that “Russian archivists have irrefutable documents which supposedly show that the famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 cannot be considered a genocide, but they cannot publish them because they are secret.” Such an assertion, Petrov suggests, is “a shame.”
There would seem to be only two possible justifications, the Memorial researcher says. On the one hand, some of the data to which Kozlov referred may include personal information of the kind which can legally remain classified for up to 75 years, but even then, the archives about what happened up to June 1934 should be open.
And on the other, there is yet another quirk in the law. If an archival document includes information about someone who has not been rehabilitated, then their case is considered still open and “access to [archival materials about it] can be obtained only by lawful representations of the repressed, their lawyers and relatives.”
But the most important reason that Russian archives remain closed despite the law is that none of the agencies of the Russian government have lived up to the 1992 decree of President Boris Yeltsin who called for the declassification “of all without exception cases involving the violation of human rights and political repressions” regardless of date.
Unfortunately, Petrov continues, the FSB “froze this process in its enormous archive under the pretext that in these documents were data about sources and methods. But the law about [that] establishes a 30-year limit on classification,” meaning that any case before 1979 should now be open but often is not.
This is creating “an absurd” situation, Petrov says, because Ukrainian and Baltic officials have declassified copies of KGB documents that were left behind when the Soviet Union fell apart. As a result, many “Russian secrets” are now in circulation as a result of the “declassification” of documents “from the archives of republic KGBs.”
Indeed, although Petrov does not speculate on this, it is entirely possible that Moscow might seek to use new legislation on punishing those who deny the official Russian version of World War II as a way of putting pressure on the governments of neighboring countries to restrict access to such archives.
But there is an additional “absurdity” in this situation. In the age of the Internet, once information is released from whatever archive, it acquires a permanent life of its own on the World Wide Web, as three extraordinarily interesting and important reports in the Russian electronic and print media show.
First, one blogger posted information from the KGB archives on mass disorders in the USSR between 1957 and 1986 (iroman.livejournal.com/131658.html#cutid1). Second, another blogger provided materials showing that this first listing, which was prepared for the Politburo in Gorbachev’s time was incomplete (afanarizm.livejournal.com/153804.html).
And third, “Novaya gazeta” published an article recounting the testimony of someone who saw documents before they were destroyed showing beyond doubt that Stalin was behind the December 1934 murder of Sergey Kirov that the Soviet dictator used to start the purges (www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/gulag04/02.html).
As Memorial’s Petrov notes, the situation regarding Russian archives is bad and is likely to get worse, but as in so many other areas, the Moscow regime is playing defense against the truth. And while it may succeed in hiding some things for a time, even an extended one, new generations and new technologies make its final victory extremely unlikely.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Window on Eurasia: Russian Regionalists View Moscow as the Enemy
Paul Goble
Vienna, June 1 – Residents in many regions of Russia are increasingly united not by nationality or by their political views but rather by hostility to Moscow and a belief that their territories must “prevail over ‘the center’ and not the other way around,” according to participants in a conference in St. Petersburg.
Last week, the Ingria Club held its annual meeting in that city’s Memorial Center, bringing together in the words of its organizers “people of the most varied nationalities and most varied political views but united by the history of [Ingermanland], its past, present and future (www.lustgalm.ru/znaj/91-ingria-na-kartu).
All of them said that “Ingermanland” – the term they use to designate what Russian officials call the region in and around St. Petersburg – must resume its place “on the map of the world,” either as a member of the European Union, a region within the Russian Federation, or as an independent state.
The main thing, the participants said, was that “the people [of that historical region] should live well and that human rights should be respected” and that the name Ingermanland be back on the map because “St. Petersburg as a center of Leningrad oblast is historically nonsensical.”
One speaker at the meeting, Svetlana Gavrilina, argued that Moscow officials are wrong to denounce regionalists like the Ingermanlanders as “Russophobes,” “fascists” or “extremists” for using the term “Moskali” to designate people from the center. Not only is it a perfectly reasonable word in Belarusian, Ukrainian and Polish, but it is used among residents of Russia.
Regional specialists often employ it, she said, and she reported that in Kaliningrad-Koenigsberg, the non-contiguous part of the Russian Federation, children play war not between Russians and Germans but among Russians, Germans and Moskali. When they do, she said, the children playing Russians and Germans find they get along, but the Moskali fight both.
She suggested there are deeper cultural references as well. In certain dialects of Russian, a “Moskal’” is a soldier, someone from the outside, or even someone who threatens, the last use even information Aleksandr Pushkin’s lines at the beginning of his poem about the gypsies. And she cited the work of Valery Kizilov on the origin of the term.
According to Kizilov’s research, Gavrilina said, “a Moskal’ is an ideological supporter of the ‘Moscow Project,” that is the policy begun in the 14th century by Muscovite princes and putting forth as its highest goal the establishment and the strengthening of a centralized and militaristic state.”
A second speaker at the meeting, Vadim Shtepa, who writes frequently on ethnic and religious questions in the Russian Federation, insisted that the future of the people in the regions of that country depends on the emergence of “regional culturological projects” rather than on the triumph of the Moscow opposition which wants to put itself on top of the same “power vertical.”
In the eyes of both, he suggested, “the basic questions are decided by the Moscow ‘Politburo,’ and the regions (or as they love to say in Moscow, ‘the provinces’) are conceived only as executors. For regionalists, as a result, any difference between ‘the powers that be’ and ‘the opposition’ disappears.”
That helps to explain why Shtepa and a third speaker, Danil Lanin, also said that “regionalists do not fit fell into the old ‘right-left’ ideological model.” Instead, “people of the most varied views” are taking part, united not by a party program but by “the struggle to acquire political subjecthood for their own regions.”
That commonality, however, is something the Ingermanlanders hope to exploit: Participants at this meeting approved an appeal to other regionalist movements and groups elsewhere in the Russian Federation to come to St. Petersburg for a Congress of Regionalists of Russia later this year.
Vienna, June 1 – Residents in many regions of Russia are increasingly united not by nationality or by their political views but rather by hostility to Moscow and a belief that their territories must “prevail over ‘the center’ and not the other way around,” according to participants in a conference in St. Petersburg.
Last week, the Ingria Club held its annual meeting in that city’s Memorial Center, bringing together in the words of its organizers “people of the most varied nationalities and most varied political views but united by the history of [Ingermanland], its past, present and future (www.lustgalm.ru/znaj/91-ingria-na-kartu).
All of them said that “Ingermanland” – the term they use to designate what Russian officials call the region in and around St. Petersburg – must resume its place “on the map of the world,” either as a member of the European Union, a region within the Russian Federation, or as an independent state.
The main thing, the participants said, was that “the people [of that historical region] should live well and that human rights should be respected” and that the name Ingermanland be back on the map because “St. Petersburg as a center of Leningrad oblast is historically nonsensical.”
One speaker at the meeting, Svetlana Gavrilina, argued that Moscow officials are wrong to denounce regionalists like the Ingermanlanders as “Russophobes,” “fascists” or “extremists” for using the term “Moskali” to designate people from the center. Not only is it a perfectly reasonable word in Belarusian, Ukrainian and Polish, but it is used among residents of Russia.
Regional specialists often employ it, she said, and she reported that in Kaliningrad-Koenigsberg, the non-contiguous part of the Russian Federation, children play war not between Russians and Germans but among Russians, Germans and Moskali. When they do, she said, the children playing Russians and Germans find they get along, but the Moskali fight both.
She suggested there are deeper cultural references as well. In certain dialects of Russian, a “Moskal’” is a soldier, someone from the outside, or even someone who threatens, the last use even information Aleksandr Pushkin’s lines at the beginning of his poem about the gypsies. And she cited the work of Valery Kizilov on the origin of the term.
According to Kizilov’s research, Gavrilina said, “a Moskal’ is an ideological supporter of the ‘Moscow Project,” that is the policy begun in the 14th century by Muscovite princes and putting forth as its highest goal the establishment and the strengthening of a centralized and militaristic state.”
A second speaker at the meeting, Vadim Shtepa, who writes frequently on ethnic and religious questions in the Russian Federation, insisted that the future of the people in the regions of that country depends on the emergence of “regional culturological projects” rather than on the triumph of the Moscow opposition which wants to put itself on top of the same “power vertical.”
In the eyes of both, he suggested, “the basic questions are decided by the Moscow ‘Politburo,’ and the regions (or as they love to say in Moscow, ‘the provinces’) are conceived only as executors. For regionalists, as a result, any difference between ‘the powers that be’ and ‘the opposition’ disappears.”
That helps to explain why Shtepa and a third speaker, Danil Lanin, also said that “regionalists do not fit fell into the old ‘right-left’ ideological model.” Instead, “people of the most varied views” are taking part, united not by a party program but by “the struggle to acquire political subjecthood for their own regions.”
That commonality, however, is something the Ingermanlanders hope to exploit: Participants at this meeting approved an appeal to other regionalist movements and groups elsewhere in the Russian Federation to come to St. Petersburg for a Congress of Regionalists of Russia later this year.
Window on Eurasia: Moderate Islam of Tatarstan Can Be ‘Exported,’ Moscow Scholar Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, June 1 – While some Western analysts argue that it is nearly impossible to “export” moderate Islam to other segments of the Muslim community, an increasing number of scholars have begun to focus on those parts of the Muslim world where “moderate” Islam is practiced and where leaders are interested in the spread of this trend.
Most have focused on Malaysia with its concept of “Islam hadari,” but Ruslan Kurbanov, a senior researcher at Moscow’s Institute of Oriental Studies who earlier worked at the RAND Corporation, argues in a new article posted online this week that the moderate Islam of Tatarstan could prove to be an equally successful “export” (www.islam.ru/pressclub/tema/exportumer/).
No one should be surprised by this, Kurbanov says, given the commonalities between the two: Both Tatarstan and Malysia “are today among the leaders not only in the economic modernization of traditional Muslim societies but also examples of the achievement by Muslim peoples of high levels of education and integration in a broader and more developed region.”
The Tatars and the Malaysians are also, he continues, “examples of the most successful models of the combination of traditional Islamic values with the demands of the contemporary world and of the promotion [in their respective societies] of the ideas of moderation, tolerance and openness to the external world.”
Moreover, both peoples, Kurbanov notes, “came to Islam by a peaceful path in the course of the adoption of the new faith by an aristocratic hierarchy and the soviet Islamization [of the remainder of their societies] ‘from above.’” And both have lived for many centuries in close proximity to “major non-Muslim communities.”
Not surprisingly, the Muslim leaders of these two societies and in their wake the political leaders of them as well have begun to talk about the kind of Islam their peoples profess as a model for others, even to the point of suggesting this in speeches delivered in Saudi Arabia, the country where Islam began.
Because Malaysia is an independent country, its political leaders have had a greater opportunity than have those in Tatarstan to promote their ideas more internationally, with that country’s prime minister, Najib Razaq, even telling senior US State Department officials that Malaysian Islam represents “a model” for all other a Muslims.
But Tatarstan’s version of moderate Islam, Kurbanov insists, deserves attention too as a possible “export commodity” both within the Russian Federation and CIS and more generally, all the more so since an increasing number of Tatar Muslim leaders and political ones as well have been pushing that idea.
In March of this year, he notes, the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Tatarstan held a roundtable on “The Export of Russian Islam,” a meeting which Kurbanov regrets “did not attract a great deal of attention from the media, although some of the presentations there are beginning to spread through the expert community (www.islamtat.ru/publ/61-1-0-555).
One reason that this session did not attract more attention at the time, the Moscow scholar suggests, is that Russia’s Muslim leaders have insisted for decades that “traditional” Russian Islam is by its very nature “moderate.” Consequently, many observers likely assumed that the meeting in Kazan did not represent an innovation.
But, Kurbanov insists, what makes this meeting and the intellectual ferment that produced it something new and important to attend to is that “until recently practically no one advanced the idea that the traditional Russian version of Islam could and should be exported to the rest of the world.”
The March meeting proposed precisely that, with Rustam Batyr, the deputy head of the Council of the Ulema of the MSD of Tatarstan, saying that “our obligation is to show the entire world just what Russian Islam is and what solutions it offers” to the problems which face the worldwide umma.
Indeed, Batyr continued, “in our republic has already long been found a model of peaceful cooperation [with people of other faiths] and therefore now, Tatarstan is one of the centers where the future of humanity is being decided,” even if many people elsewhere are not yet aware of that reality.
According to Kurbanov, the Tatars believe that a major “channel” for exporting their version of Islam consists of the works of the brilliant pleiade of Muslim theologians who formed what is sometimes called the Jadid movement at the end of the tsarist period. But those who seek to promote these writers are limited by the small print runs of their works.
If that changes or if a new intellectual renaissance begins in Tatarstan, Kurbanov suggests, then the impact of moderate Tatar Islam on the Muslims of the world could quickly become far great than many expect, a development that could justify Batyr’s contention that Kazan is where “the future of humanity” is in fact being decided.
Vienna, June 1 – While some Western analysts argue that it is nearly impossible to “export” moderate Islam to other segments of the Muslim community, an increasing number of scholars have begun to focus on those parts of the Muslim world where “moderate” Islam is practiced and where leaders are interested in the spread of this trend.
Most have focused on Malaysia with its concept of “Islam hadari,” but Ruslan Kurbanov, a senior researcher at Moscow’s Institute of Oriental Studies who earlier worked at the RAND Corporation, argues in a new article posted online this week that the moderate Islam of Tatarstan could prove to be an equally successful “export” (www.islam.ru/pressclub/tema/exportumer/).
No one should be surprised by this, Kurbanov says, given the commonalities between the two: Both Tatarstan and Malysia “are today among the leaders not only in the economic modernization of traditional Muslim societies but also examples of the achievement by Muslim peoples of high levels of education and integration in a broader and more developed region.”
The Tatars and the Malaysians are also, he continues, “examples of the most successful models of the combination of traditional Islamic values with the demands of the contemporary world and of the promotion [in their respective societies] of the ideas of moderation, tolerance and openness to the external world.”
Moreover, both peoples, Kurbanov notes, “came to Islam by a peaceful path in the course of the adoption of the new faith by an aristocratic hierarchy and the soviet Islamization [of the remainder of their societies] ‘from above.’” And both have lived for many centuries in close proximity to “major non-Muslim communities.”
Not surprisingly, the Muslim leaders of these two societies and in their wake the political leaders of them as well have begun to talk about the kind of Islam their peoples profess as a model for others, even to the point of suggesting this in speeches delivered in Saudi Arabia, the country where Islam began.
Because Malaysia is an independent country, its political leaders have had a greater opportunity than have those in Tatarstan to promote their ideas more internationally, with that country’s prime minister, Najib Razaq, even telling senior US State Department officials that Malaysian Islam represents “a model” for all other a Muslims.
But Tatarstan’s version of moderate Islam, Kurbanov insists, deserves attention too as a possible “export commodity” both within the Russian Federation and CIS and more generally, all the more so since an increasing number of Tatar Muslim leaders and political ones as well have been pushing that idea.
In March of this year, he notes, the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Tatarstan held a roundtable on “The Export of Russian Islam,” a meeting which Kurbanov regrets “did not attract a great deal of attention from the media, although some of the presentations there are beginning to spread through the expert community (www.islamtat.ru/publ/61-1-0-555).
One reason that this session did not attract more attention at the time, the Moscow scholar suggests, is that Russia’s Muslim leaders have insisted for decades that “traditional” Russian Islam is by its very nature “moderate.” Consequently, many observers likely assumed that the meeting in Kazan did not represent an innovation.
But, Kurbanov insists, what makes this meeting and the intellectual ferment that produced it something new and important to attend to is that “until recently practically no one advanced the idea that the traditional Russian version of Islam could and should be exported to the rest of the world.”
The March meeting proposed precisely that, with Rustam Batyr, the deputy head of the Council of the Ulema of the MSD of Tatarstan, saying that “our obligation is to show the entire world just what Russian Islam is and what solutions it offers” to the problems which face the worldwide umma.
Indeed, Batyr continued, “in our republic has already long been found a model of peaceful cooperation [with people of other faiths] and therefore now, Tatarstan is one of the centers where the future of humanity is being decided,” even if many people elsewhere are not yet aware of that reality.
According to Kurbanov, the Tatars believe that a major “channel” for exporting their version of Islam consists of the works of the brilliant pleiade of Muslim theologians who formed what is sometimes called the Jadid movement at the end of the tsarist period. But those who seek to promote these writers are limited by the small print runs of their works.
If that changes or if a new intellectual renaissance begins in Tatarstan, Kurbanov suggests, then the impact of moderate Tatar Islam on the Muslims of the world could quickly become far great than many expect, a development that could justify Batyr’s contention that Kazan is where “the future of humanity” is in fact being decided.
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