Paul Goble
Vienna, August 17 – Despite the expectations of many, the Internet has not killed off samizdat publications in the Russian Federation, although the blogosphere has reduced the amount of “self-published” materials by as much as 50 percent over the last few years, according to an exhibit about samizdat now on display at Moscow’s Sakharov Museum.
In a report on Chaskor.ru today, journalist Aleksandr Litoy says that the exhibit, which will run until the end of August, shows that “thousands of Russians read self-produced journals, and they do not spare any effort in order to find reading matter [in this format] that fits their taste (www.chaskor.ru/p.php?id=9389).
As was the case in Soviet times, so too now, the Chaskor.ru journalist continues, “samizdat lives according to its own laws which are very different from those of the mass press. Here it is not the journal which seeks its reader, attracting him by means of PR and advertisement, but the reader chooses the journal which corresponds to his almost unique taste.”
Litoy says that it is “not a simple matter” to say why some Russians prefer samizdat to the Internet, since the latter allows for “bypassing the censorship” and is “much less expensive” to use and distribute than printed matter. But he suggests that part of the reason is that samizdat allows its readers to feel intimately connected to “something from period of the dissidents.”
But samizdat now like samizdat in the past is not just about politics. Much of it involves music, art, or fantasy, and many of the devotees of these subjects, Litoy suggests, appear to feel that printed works offer both a greater opportunity for originality, sometimes via mixed media presentations, and greater permanence compared to someone on the web.
And yet another reason for the survival of samizdat is that in the flood of information offered by the Internet, samizdat strikes many as more reliable and authentic precisely because of the greater effort that is required to produce it, according to Elena Strukova, the head of the sector of non-traditional publications of the Moscow State Public Historical Library.
And that authenticity, she continues, is one of the reasons that her library continues to receive a flood of such publications, “hundreds” in 2008 alone. According to her, this new samizdat is produced by two different kinds of people: “those who are trying to influence society and those who are consciously going underground.”
The new samizdat, however, is in two respects very different than its ancestor. On the one hand, it is often distributed through bookstores, where because it is issued in fewer than 1000 copies, there is no need for it to be registered as media. Litoy reports that “one of the most popular places” for this trade is Moscow’s “Falanster” bookshop.
And on the other, today’s samizdat interacts with the Internet. There are several sites which index this kind of publication, including samizdat.zaraz.org and www.ruszine.com, and there is also an increasing interpenetration of these two kinds of media, with some people producing both. An example of that, Litoy says, is to be found at Irkutsk_zabro.livejournal.com
Monday, August 17, 2009
Window on Eurasia: Leaving the CIS, Georgia Becomes Part of Russia’s ‘Far Abroad’
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 17 – Tomorrow, one year after Tbilisi declared its intention to do so, Georgia will officially cease to be a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and thus, in the words of one Moscow paper, should now be considered part of Russia’s ‘far abroad,’ the term Moscow uses for countries beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.
The meaning of this step may be both less and more than meets the eye. On the one hand, Georgia’s participation in the Russian-led group has been largely nominal for the last five years, and Tbilisi has indicated that it will continue to honor some 70 of the 113 agreements it signed as part of the CIS (svpressa.ru/world/article/12744/).
But on the other, Georgia’s action, precisely because it is unlikely to be accompanied by any cataclysmic consequences, may make it easier for some other former Soviet republics, Ukraine in particular, to take this step and thus bring to an end an organization that increasingly has resembled a club of presidents rather than an effective regional organization.
Georgia’s involvement with the CIS has been more troubled than that of any other member. Tbilisi was the last of the former Soviet republics to join, doing so in March 1994 only because then-President Eduard Shevardnadze insisted that membership would help Georgia maintain its territorial integrity (www.vremya.ru/2009/147/5/235265.html).
During Boris Yeltsin’s time in office as Russian president, Tbilisi regularly secured CIS declarations on behalf of Georgia’s territorial integrity. But under his successors, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the situation changed, culminating in Russia’s use of force against Georgia a year ago and its extension of diplomatic recognition to Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
On August 12, 2008, near the end of “the five-day war,” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili declared that his country would leave the CIS because that organization had done nothing to prevent Russian “aggression and occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Nine days later, the Georgian foreign ministry informed the CIS of Tbilisi’s intention.
Now, after the conclusion of the one-year notice required for such a step, Georgia will not be formally a member of a grouping it has had little to do with in recent years. Like some Russian officials, a few Georgians think this is unfortunate. Among them is Shevardnadze who urged Georgia to join in the first place.
He told “Vremya novostei” that “the CIS as a rule always shared the position of Georgia on the separatists” and that in his view, “one should not take a decision about leaving so quickly. Undoubtedly,” he said, “we could still use the Commonwealth [of Independent States] in a positive way for Georgia.”
Zurab Khonelidze, Georgia’s last permanent representative to the CIS, agreed. “The departure of Georgia will only free Russia from many obligations, including recognition in the framework of this organization of the territorial integrity of Georgia. We could have still used [it] to achieve something useful for our country.”
But the die is now cast. A Georgian foreign ministry official observed that Putin’s visit to Abkhazia last week “removed all illusions” by showing that Moscow intends to use Abkhazia, which the CIS and the international community had recognized as an inalienable part of Georgia, for use as a military base.
And Mikhail Machavariani, the first deputy chairman of the Georgian parliament, added that in his view, “The CIS will soon cease to exist. Or Russia will remain its only member. Over the last year, Moscow has succeeded in worsening its ties with Belarus and Ukraine, and the Uzbeks too are dissatisfied with many aspects of [the CIS].”
According to “Vremya novostei,” Georgia’s new status as part of the “far abroad” was signaled already last Saturday when “the first group of American military instructors arrived in Georgia” in order to begin training Georgian “peacekeepers” for service in NATO-led operations in Afghanistan.
Vienna, August 17 – Tomorrow, one year after Tbilisi declared its intention to do so, Georgia will officially cease to be a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and thus, in the words of one Moscow paper, should now be considered part of Russia’s ‘far abroad,’ the term Moscow uses for countries beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.
The meaning of this step may be both less and more than meets the eye. On the one hand, Georgia’s participation in the Russian-led group has been largely nominal for the last five years, and Tbilisi has indicated that it will continue to honor some 70 of the 113 agreements it signed as part of the CIS (svpressa.ru/world/article/12744/).
But on the other, Georgia’s action, precisely because it is unlikely to be accompanied by any cataclysmic consequences, may make it easier for some other former Soviet republics, Ukraine in particular, to take this step and thus bring to an end an organization that increasingly has resembled a club of presidents rather than an effective regional organization.
Georgia’s involvement with the CIS has been more troubled than that of any other member. Tbilisi was the last of the former Soviet republics to join, doing so in March 1994 only because then-President Eduard Shevardnadze insisted that membership would help Georgia maintain its territorial integrity (www.vremya.ru/2009/147/5/235265.html).
During Boris Yeltsin’s time in office as Russian president, Tbilisi regularly secured CIS declarations on behalf of Georgia’s territorial integrity. But under his successors, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the situation changed, culminating in Russia’s use of force against Georgia a year ago and its extension of diplomatic recognition to Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
On August 12, 2008, near the end of “the five-day war,” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili declared that his country would leave the CIS because that organization had done nothing to prevent Russian “aggression and occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Nine days later, the Georgian foreign ministry informed the CIS of Tbilisi’s intention.
Now, after the conclusion of the one-year notice required for such a step, Georgia will not be formally a member of a grouping it has had little to do with in recent years. Like some Russian officials, a few Georgians think this is unfortunate. Among them is Shevardnadze who urged Georgia to join in the first place.
He told “Vremya novostei” that “the CIS as a rule always shared the position of Georgia on the separatists” and that in his view, “one should not take a decision about leaving so quickly. Undoubtedly,” he said, “we could still use the Commonwealth [of Independent States] in a positive way for Georgia.”
Zurab Khonelidze, Georgia’s last permanent representative to the CIS, agreed. “The departure of Georgia will only free Russia from many obligations, including recognition in the framework of this organization of the territorial integrity of Georgia. We could have still used [it] to achieve something useful for our country.”
But the die is now cast. A Georgian foreign ministry official observed that Putin’s visit to Abkhazia last week “removed all illusions” by showing that Moscow intends to use Abkhazia, which the CIS and the international community had recognized as an inalienable part of Georgia, for use as a military base.
And Mikhail Machavariani, the first deputy chairman of the Georgian parliament, added that in his view, “The CIS will soon cease to exist. Or Russia will remain its only member. Over the last year, Moscow has succeeded in worsening its ties with Belarus and Ukraine, and the Uzbeks too are dissatisfied with many aspects of [the CIS].”
According to “Vremya novostei,” Georgia’s new status as part of the “far abroad” was signaled already last Saturday when “the first group of American military instructors arrived in Georgia” in order to begin training Georgian “peacekeepers” for service in NATO-led operations in Afghanistan.
Window on Eurasia: Ukraine Has Nearly 3,000 Russian-Language Schools, but Russia Doesn’t Have Even a Single Ukrainian-Language One
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 17 – Despite Moscow’s frequent charges and complaints, Kyiv pays for the operation of nearly 3,000 Russian-language schools as well as other Russian-language institutions in Ukraine, a level of support especially striking given that Russia does not pay for the operation of even one Ukrainian-language school on its territory.
And that absence of Russian support for Ukrainian-language schools not only violates the Russian constitution but also makes it harder for Ukrainian officials to justify continuing their backing of Russian-language schools while providing evidence for those Ukrainians who argue that Russia doesn’t respect Ukrainians and that Kyiv should pursue a more independent course.
Indeed, on his Ekho Moskvy radio talk show Friday night, Sergey Parkhomenko argued that the Russian attitudes this absence reflects, is an important reason for antipathy toward Moscow among Russia’s neighbors and hence Russia’s increasing isolation in the former Soviet space (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/sut/612419-echo.phtml).
According to the most recent national censuses in the two countries – and Parkhomenko notes that these enumerations are neither recent nor completely relliable – there are 8.3 million ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and 2.9 million ethnic Ukrainians in Russia. Of the latter, 1.8 million told Russian census workers that Ukrainian was their native language.
That provides the basis, he suggests, for comparing Ukrainian support of Russian-language schools with the absence of Russian support for Ukrainian-language schools. According to a recent survey, there are 983 Russian-language pre-schools in Ukraine with 164,000 children enrolled; in Russia, there are no Ukrainian-language pre-schools.
In Ukraine, there are 1199 general education schools with Russian as the language of instruction, with 779,500 pupils. In Russia, there are no Ukrainian-language schools and hence no pupils in them. At the same time, there are another 1755 schools in Ukraine in which Russian is a language of instruction alongside Ukrainian; in Russia, there is not one such school.
Another measure of the difference concerns the number of people studying one of these languages in the two countries: In Ukraine, 1.3 million children are studying Russian; but in Russia, only 205 are studying Ukrainian. According to Parkhomenko, that number is so low that it must involve students at a school attached to the Ukrainian embassy.
And yet a third of the comparative figures he offers shows that Ukraine currently publishes 1.5 million Russian-language textbooks and 125,000 Russian-Ukrainian dictionaries each year, whereas the Russian Federation government is not paying for the publication of a single copy of a Ukrainian-language book for students in that country.
What this points to, the Ekho Moskvy host says, is the existence of “two state policies. There is the state policy in Ukraine of financing the Russian language. And there is … [ellipsis in the original]. Fine, there are problems. It would be possible for there to be more [Russian-language schools in Ukraine]. Certainly, earlier, there were more, and now there are fewer.”
But Parkhomenko notes, “the state policy of Russia is … clear, direct, precise, thought-out, systematic, and consistent. It is that there is no Ukrainian language and no Ukrainian culture on the territory of Russia,” despite Ukrainians being the third largest nationality in Russia and despite nearly two million of them saying Ukrainian is their native language.
And this policy, he continues, ignores the provisions of the Russian Constitution which says in Paragraph 26 that every Russian citizen has the right to use his native language and to choose it as the language of instruction as well as of the Russian education law which declares the same thing.
In Soviet times, the slogan, “Fulfill the Provisions of the Constitution!” was the basis for “the entire dissent movement,” the Ekho Moskvy broadcaster says. But “today this slogan has disappeared” from the scene. And relatively few Russian citizens demand that the provisions of the Constitution or of the laws be realized – or even expect them to be.
Obviously, as Russian callers to Parkhomenko’s program insisted and as he admitted, the international status of Russian is very different than that of Ukrainian, and hence many Ukrainian parents may prefer to have their children study Russian rather than their native language. But the imbalance in the number of schools does not reflect just that.
Instead, it is the product of Russian attitudes, Parkhomenko says, which have helped over the last decade to “destroy the interrelationship of Russia with the countries around it.” Russia, he says, “remains alone, entirely alone ... and not because of conspiracies or because someone is pursuing anti-Russian interests.”
And he concludes that this unfortunate situation reflects the even more unfortunate fact that “the Russian leadership treats its responsibilities [to its own citizens] with such sincere contempt,” an attitude that the citizens of neighboring countries can see and one that they recognize is directed against their co-ethnics in Russia itself.
Vienna, August 17 – Despite Moscow’s frequent charges and complaints, Kyiv pays for the operation of nearly 3,000 Russian-language schools as well as other Russian-language institutions in Ukraine, a level of support especially striking given that Russia does not pay for the operation of even one Ukrainian-language school on its territory.
And that absence of Russian support for Ukrainian-language schools not only violates the Russian constitution but also makes it harder for Ukrainian officials to justify continuing their backing of Russian-language schools while providing evidence for those Ukrainians who argue that Russia doesn’t respect Ukrainians and that Kyiv should pursue a more independent course.
Indeed, on his Ekho Moskvy radio talk show Friday night, Sergey Parkhomenko argued that the Russian attitudes this absence reflects, is an important reason for antipathy toward Moscow among Russia’s neighbors and hence Russia’s increasing isolation in the former Soviet space (www.echo.msk.ru/programs/sut/612419-echo.phtml).
According to the most recent national censuses in the two countries – and Parkhomenko notes that these enumerations are neither recent nor completely relliable – there are 8.3 million ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and 2.9 million ethnic Ukrainians in Russia. Of the latter, 1.8 million told Russian census workers that Ukrainian was their native language.
That provides the basis, he suggests, for comparing Ukrainian support of Russian-language schools with the absence of Russian support for Ukrainian-language schools. According to a recent survey, there are 983 Russian-language pre-schools in Ukraine with 164,000 children enrolled; in Russia, there are no Ukrainian-language pre-schools.
In Ukraine, there are 1199 general education schools with Russian as the language of instruction, with 779,500 pupils. In Russia, there are no Ukrainian-language schools and hence no pupils in them. At the same time, there are another 1755 schools in Ukraine in which Russian is a language of instruction alongside Ukrainian; in Russia, there is not one such school.
Another measure of the difference concerns the number of people studying one of these languages in the two countries: In Ukraine, 1.3 million children are studying Russian; but in Russia, only 205 are studying Ukrainian. According to Parkhomenko, that number is so low that it must involve students at a school attached to the Ukrainian embassy.
And yet a third of the comparative figures he offers shows that Ukraine currently publishes 1.5 million Russian-language textbooks and 125,000 Russian-Ukrainian dictionaries each year, whereas the Russian Federation government is not paying for the publication of a single copy of a Ukrainian-language book for students in that country.
What this points to, the Ekho Moskvy host says, is the existence of “two state policies. There is the state policy in Ukraine of financing the Russian language. And there is … [ellipsis in the original]. Fine, there are problems. It would be possible for there to be more [Russian-language schools in Ukraine]. Certainly, earlier, there were more, and now there are fewer.”
But Parkhomenko notes, “the state policy of Russia is … clear, direct, precise, thought-out, systematic, and consistent. It is that there is no Ukrainian language and no Ukrainian culture on the territory of Russia,” despite Ukrainians being the third largest nationality in Russia and despite nearly two million of them saying Ukrainian is their native language.
And this policy, he continues, ignores the provisions of the Russian Constitution which says in Paragraph 26 that every Russian citizen has the right to use his native language and to choose it as the language of instruction as well as of the Russian education law which declares the same thing.
In Soviet times, the slogan, “Fulfill the Provisions of the Constitution!” was the basis for “the entire dissent movement,” the Ekho Moskvy broadcaster says. But “today this slogan has disappeared” from the scene. And relatively few Russian citizens demand that the provisions of the Constitution or of the laws be realized – or even expect them to be.
Obviously, as Russian callers to Parkhomenko’s program insisted and as he admitted, the international status of Russian is very different than that of Ukrainian, and hence many Ukrainian parents may prefer to have their children study Russian rather than their native language. But the imbalance in the number of schools does not reflect just that.
Instead, it is the product of Russian attitudes, Parkhomenko says, which have helped over the last decade to “destroy the interrelationship of Russia with the countries around it.” Russia, he says, “remains alone, entirely alone ... and not because of conspiracies or because someone is pursuing anti-Russian interests.”
And he concludes that this unfortunate situation reflects the even more unfortunate fact that “the Russian leadership treats its responsibilities [to its own citizens] with such sincere contempt,” an attitude that the citizens of neighboring countries can see and one that they recognize is directed against their co-ethnics in Russia itself.
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