Paul Goble
Vienna, December 1 – In order to counter extremism in the North Caucasus and prevent young people from joining Islamist radicals, the Russian government should set up a special Caucasus Radio where experts on the region could freely discuss even the most difficult and sensitive problems, an advisor to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov says.
Timur Aliyev, who also works as a journalist, made this proposal yesterday to a session on “inter-confessional and interethnic dialogue in the media at a Nalchik forum on “The Caucasus: Tradition and Modernization” that attracted officials, journalists and specialists from across that region and from Moscow as well (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/162590/).
His comments came after other participants highlighted the extent to which the media, both regional and Moscow-based, are failing to win the “counter-propaganda” battle with Islamist and nationalist groups, either because the former are unwilling or unable to discuss many subjects or because the latter are better positioned to appeal to the often alienated young.
Inal’ Gashokov, the deputy chairman of the Cherkessk city Duma, said that regional media must not be “afraid” to talk about nationality problems and “expressed concern” about a disturbing pattern in his own United Russia Party. Many of its members, he said, “speak not from ideological positions but from ethno-national ones,” thus exacerbating local feelings.
Dzhambulat Umarov, an advisor to the chairman of the Chechen Republic, criticized the media for failing to “explain to young people what jihad is, how the greater jihad is different than the lesser one,” and so on. Such explanations are necessary so that young people will “think before going into the forests.”
He added that the media must lay more stress on “that which unites people.” In particular, he said, the media should stress that “all religions have one foundation, that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are Abrahamic faiths, [descending from a man] who was neither a Jew nor a Christian but rather a hannif, that is, a follower of a single God.”
“It would be a good thing to propagandize this Abrahamic religion in the context of the unity of the spiritual values of humanity,” he continued, thus introducing into yesterday’s discussion at Nalchik ideas that have been under discussion in the Moscow Patriarchate since Kirill took over.
Aleksey Malashenko, an expert at the Moscow Carnegie Center, agreed on the need for the media to deal with difficult questions. “If we avoid these subjects,” he told the group, then others will take them up” and define them in a different way, especially via the Internet where, he said, “one can say whatever one likes, including the most provocative things.”
But one participant in the discussion was skeptical about what the media could achieve. Orkhan Dzhemal, a correspondent for “Russky Newsweek,” argued that most inter-ethnic conflicts in the North Caucasus reflect not ideological differences but disputes over land that were triggered by the Russian law “On the rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples.”
The media can do only so much about that act and its consequences, Dzhemal suggested, but he nonetheless called for the creation of “national newspapers in Russian associated with the interests of one group or another, on the pages of which it would be possible to conduct ‘a certain dialogue’” lest the field be ceded to extremist groups.
The Nalchik meeting was about far more than the media, however, and as today’s “Vremya novostei” points out, many of the speakers offered some interesting perspectives on the situation in the Caucasus and Moscow’s role there. Three speakers made particularly intriguing comments (www.vremya.ru/2009/221/4/242824.html).
First, Kabardino-Balkaria President Arsen Kanokov argued that the North Caucasus could be “an advanced post for modernization” but said some of its traditional values such as large families and respect for elders must be preserved. Moreover, he insisted, the much-criticized clans play a useful role by helping officials to identify the best candidates for jobs.
Second, Nikolay Fedoryak, the deputy Presidential plenipotentiary to the Southern Federal District, said he very much supported the idea of a new official to oversee the North Caucasus, “especially if he receives control over financial flows [to the republics of that region], which the plenipotentiary representative does not have.”
And third, Frants Klintsevich, a United Russia Duma deputy, said that “unfortunately, it often happens that one responsible group from the region reaches an agreement in Moscow with one set of people, and another group at the very same time reaches one with another,” leading “to conflicts which could be avoided if everyone would just live according to the law.”
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Window on Eurasia: Russians Now Compelling Their State to Do What It Should But Doesn’t Want to, Moscow Commentator Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, December 1 – In what she calls “the Dymovsky effect,” a Moscow State professor who serves in the Social Chamber says, Russian activists have had increasing success in forcing the Russian state to do what the Constitution and laws call for it to do even though the powers that be do not want to do so, an indication of the rise of a limited kind of civil society.
MVD Major Aleksey ‘s appearance on YouTube forced Moscow to focus the militia, a petition with 90,000 signatures forced them to free Svetlana Bakhmin, and popular outrage led to the start of an investigation into the death of Sergey Magnitsky in prison – all indications Elena Lukyanova says that society is “rising up” and “at last forcing the government to stir itself” (www.specletter.com/obcshestvo/2009-12-01/tsepnaja-reaktsija-effekta-dymovskogo.html).
“This chain of events of the last year,” she argues, is highly significant because in each case, the government was forced “under the pressure of society” to do what it was supposed to do by law but did not for various reasons want to, something all the more impressive because of the increasingly tight restrictions on the media and “the repressions” visited upon the populace.
These events, Lukyanova points out, “coincided with” greater activism in the Social Chamber whose members began to declare that “we will take this question under our control!” as well as with the reformation of the work of the Presidential council for support of the development of the institutions of civil society and human rights.
So far, she concedes, “it is difficult to believe in all this. It seems that this is not a chain of events but a chain of accidents. But facts are stubborn. And an analyst does not have the right not to note them and, having noted them, not connect them -- Even if all this is only a temporary concession for the weakening of tensions in a period of economic crisis.”
Has Russian society in fact “woken up”? It appears that a part of it has and that the government has no choice but to take notice of this equally “stubborn” fact. That is because the powers that be “know from history that even the most brutal and cruel dictatorial regimes sooner or later are stripped from the face of the earth by the force of a public explosion.”
It turns out that contrary to the expectations of many only a few months away, many Russians do think they have rights under the Constitution and are prepared to demand them, and consequently they are taking action on the basis of the notion that “We are the state” rather than assuming that the state is just the bosses in the Kremlin and Government House.
Russians are beginning to recognize, she insists, that “the state is a territory and the people who live on it, with their own problems, concerns, and relations to the state.” And consequently that “we do not exist for the state,” as many Russian leaders have assumed, but “the state exists for us.”
As a result, Russians are increasingly recognizing that they “have the right to evaluate the effectiveness of its work. And it is only our hired staff, which we pay a salary to carry out definite functions, including the struggle with crime and for justice. And if the government fighters [don’t perform], then we don’t need such a state.” Indeed, “a poor worker will be fired.”
“It appears,” she says, “the people has begun to understand this. People say that the Russian muzhik can be kept in a yoke for a long time but that he also can run away fast.” Lukyanova says that she “fears” to draw a conclusion, but what is going on is clearly “the beginning of the civil society in Russia for which we have so long worked.”
That does not mean that it is now fully formed. The powers that be can ignore many things and insist on doing what is convenient rather than what is right all too often. But the experience of seeing that complaints and activism can shake the state and force it to do what it otherwise would not is important.
Lukyanova concludes her article by pointing out that in Switzerland, each of the cantons begins its school year on a different day. That creates complications for the Swiss government, but a common opening day will be possible there “only after” such a step is approved by referendum “in a minimum of 10 cantons.”
Russians are there yet, she says. That is “an affair of the future.” But the events of the last months show that movement has taken place toward a situation in which Russian officials will live according to laws and the population will demand that they do so and that they pay attention to what those who pay their salaries want in other matters as well.
Vienna, December 1 – In what she calls “the Dymovsky effect,” a Moscow State professor who serves in the Social Chamber says, Russian activists have had increasing success in forcing the Russian state to do what the Constitution and laws call for it to do even though the powers that be do not want to do so, an indication of the rise of a limited kind of civil society.
MVD Major Aleksey ‘s appearance on YouTube forced Moscow to focus the militia, a petition with 90,000 signatures forced them to free Svetlana Bakhmin, and popular outrage led to the start of an investigation into the death of Sergey Magnitsky in prison – all indications Elena Lukyanova says that society is “rising up” and “at last forcing the government to stir itself” (www.specletter.com/obcshestvo/2009-12-01/tsepnaja-reaktsija-effekta-dymovskogo.html).
“This chain of events of the last year,” she argues, is highly significant because in each case, the government was forced “under the pressure of society” to do what it was supposed to do by law but did not for various reasons want to, something all the more impressive because of the increasingly tight restrictions on the media and “the repressions” visited upon the populace.
These events, Lukyanova points out, “coincided with” greater activism in the Social Chamber whose members began to declare that “we will take this question under our control!” as well as with the reformation of the work of the Presidential council for support of the development of the institutions of civil society and human rights.
So far, she concedes, “it is difficult to believe in all this. It seems that this is not a chain of events but a chain of accidents. But facts are stubborn. And an analyst does not have the right not to note them and, having noted them, not connect them -- Even if all this is only a temporary concession for the weakening of tensions in a period of economic crisis.”
Has Russian society in fact “woken up”? It appears that a part of it has and that the government has no choice but to take notice of this equally “stubborn” fact. That is because the powers that be “know from history that even the most brutal and cruel dictatorial regimes sooner or later are stripped from the face of the earth by the force of a public explosion.”
It turns out that contrary to the expectations of many only a few months away, many Russians do think they have rights under the Constitution and are prepared to demand them, and consequently they are taking action on the basis of the notion that “We are the state” rather than assuming that the state is just the bosses in the Kremlin and Government House.
Russians are beginning to recognize, she insists, that “the state is a territory and the people who live on it, with their own problems, concerns, and relations to the state.” And consequently that “we do not exist for the state,” as many Russian leaders have assumed, but “the state exists for us.”
As a result, Russians are increasingly recognizing that they “have the right to evaluate the effectiveness of its work. And it is only our hired staff, which we pay a salary to carry out definite functions, including the struggle with crime and for justice. And if the government fighters [don’t perform], then we don’t need such a state.” Indeed, “a poor worker will be fired.”
“It appears,” she says, “the people has begun to understand this. People say that the Russian muzhik can be kept in a yoke for a long time but that he also can run away fast.” Lukyanova says that she “fears” to draw a conclusion, but what is going on is clearly “the beginning of the civil society in Russia for which we have so long worked.”
That does not mean that it is now fully formed. The powers that be can ignore many things and insist on doing what is convenient rather than what is right all too often. But the experience of seeing that complaints and activism can shake the state and force it to do what it otherwise would not is important.
Lukyanova concludes her article by pointing out that in Switzerland, each of the cantons begins its school year on a different day. That creates complications for the Swiss government, but a common opening day will be possible there “only after” such a step is approved by referendum “in a minimum of 10 cantons.”
Russians are there yet, she says. That is “an affair of the future.” But the events of the last months show that movement has taken place toward a situation in which Russian officials will live according to laws and the population will demand that they do so and that they pay attention to what those who pay their salaries want in other matters as well.
Window on Eurasia: School Texts in Post-Soviet States Present Russia as the Enemy, Study Finds
Paul Goble
Vienna, December 1 – With the exception of only one country and the partial exception of a second, ten post-Soviet states are now using textbooks that present Russia in all its historical forms as the enemy of the peoples of these countries, a pattern that is likely to make it more rather than less difficult for these countries to cooperate in the future.
That is the conclusion of a 391-page report released today in Moscow on “The Treatment of the General History of Russia and the Peoples of the Post-Soviet Countries in the History Textbooks of the New Independent States” (www.nlvp.ru/reports/doclad_hist_02_light.pdf; a summary is available at www.news.km.ru/v_shkolax_sng_iz_rossii_delayut).
Supported by a grant from the Government Club Foundation to the Moscow Center of Social Technologies, a group of researchers examined 187 school history textbooks and teacher guides from 12 non-Russian countries (books from Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are not included) to see how schools in each are presenting both Russian and national history.
The scholars concluded “with regret” that “except for Belarus and (to a lesser degree) Armenia, all the remaining countries have moved to present the rising generation with a nationalistic view of history, based on myths about the antiquity of one’s own people, about the high cultural mission of its ancestors and about ‘the cursed enemy’” – the Russians.
Often, these textbooks present these messages together. In an Azerbaijani history textbook, for example, there is a report that in 914, “Slavic militias” for months “without stopping” attacked and despoiled “population points on the Azerbaijani shores of the Caspian Sea … killing peaceful residents and taking women and children prisoners.”
And in a history textbook for Estonians, students learn, the authors of the Moscow text say, that “the Baltic crusade was part of a conflict between East and West, between the Catholic world and Orthodox Byzantium and Rus,” adding that by not pressing its advantage against Rus at that time, the West “missed a chance” to change the world in a positive way.
Alternatively, they separate these issues but place primacy on the way in which Russia and Russians were and are the enemy. A Georgian textbook says that “enemies did everything to sow hatred between the Georgian and Abkhazian peoples with the goal of taking Abkhazia away from Georgia.”
But some of the most problematic passages of the textbooks, the authors say, concern efforts to promote the antiquity of nations, many of which most historians say emerged far later. Thus, an Estonian textbook traces that nation back to “the stone age,” and an Azerbaijani one suggests that Azerbaijanis descend from the Sumerians.
More recent history, the Russian authors of this study say, is even more distorted in an anti-Russian direction. One Georgian text they cite says that “the final goal of the colonial policy of Russia was the weakening and destruction of anti-Russian forces sin Georgia,” the takeover of Georgia’s natural wealth, and “the assimilation of the Georgian people.”
After 1917, this same text continues, “Soviet power pitilessly struggled against the national movement, attempting by all means to reduce Georgian national self-consciousness and deprive Georgian culture of its uniqueness and nationality,” a program that provoked rather than stilled the national movement there.
And as for World War II, the Georgian text says, “the majority of people conceived the war as a patriotic one. But another part of the Georgian people recognized perfectly well that in this case, Georgia is a conquered and dependent country, that namely Russia had deprived the Georgians of their state independence and … forcibly united it into the Soviet Union.”
But according to this new study, “the Soviet version of history” is mostly being driven out of the minds of young people mostly by neglect. Thus, according to a poll they cite, 58 percent of young Uzbeks have not heard about the 20th Congress of the CPSU, and 50 percent of young Armenians do not know anything about the February 1917 revolution.
The figures for other countries are even lower, and as the authors say, these figures are what the students in these countries claim. The real figures, the study concludes, are 10 to 20 percent lower, and suggest that it is clear that in many of these countries, eliminating any positive memory of the Soviet past is “one of the tasks of the national school.”
“If these tendencies continue,” the new book concludes, “then after 15 to 20 years, the events of the 20th century will be completely forgotten by the population. In the consciousness of the peoples of the former USSR will be formed an image of Russia as an evil empire which for centuries destroyed, oppressed and exploited them.”
(What this study does not do is focus on how some Russian texts are doing exactly the same thing, blaming all the problems of Russia on others and projecting Russian history implausibly back. To give but a single example of this: one new book traces “Russian” history from the time of Noah (traditciya.ru/e-store/books/98/422/).)
Vienna, December 1 – With the exception of only one country and the partial exception of a second, ten post-Soviet states are now using textbooks that present Russia in all its historical forms as the enemy of the peoples of these countries, a pattern that is likely to make it more rather than less difficult for these countries to cooperate in the future.
That is the conclusion of a 391-page report released today in Moscow on “The Treatment of the General History of Russia and the Peoples of the Post-Soviet Countries in the History Textbooks of the New Independent States” (www.nlvp.ru/reports/doclad_hist_02_light.pdf; a summary is available at www.news.km.ru/v_shkolax_sng_iz_rossii_delayut).
Supported by a grant from the Government Club Foundation to the Moscow Center of Social Technologies, a group of researchers examined 187 school history textbooks and teacher guides from 12 non-Russian countries (books from Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are not included) to see how schools in each are presenting both Russian and national history.
The scholars concluded “with regret” that “except for Belarus and (to a lesser degree) Armenia, all the remaining countries have moved to present the rising generation with a nationalistic view of history, based on myths about the antiquity of one’s own people, about the high cultural mission of its ancestors and about ‘the cursed enemy’” – the Russians.
Often, these textbooks present these messages together. In an Azerbaijani history textbook, for example, there is a report that in 914, “Slavic militias” for months “without stopping” attacked and despoiled “population points on the Azerbaijani shores of the Caspian Sea … killing peaceful residents and taking women and children prisoners.”
And in a history textbook for Estonians, students learn, the authors of the Moscow text say, that “the Baltic crusade was part of a conflict between East and West, between the Catholic world and Orthodox Byzantium and Rus,” adding that by not pressing its advantage against Rus at that time, the West “missed a chance” to change the world in a positive way.
Alternatively, they separate these issues but place primacy on the way in which Russia and Russians were and are the enemy. A Georgian textbook says that “enemies did everything to sow hatred between the Georgian and Abkhazian peoples with the goal of taking Abkhazia away from Georgia.”
But some of the most problematic passages of the textbooks, the authors say, concern efforts to promote the antiquity of nations, many of which most historians say emerged far later. Thus, an Estonian textbook traces that nation back to “the stone age,” and an Azerbaijani one suggests that Azerbaijanis descend from the Sumerians.
More recent history, the Russian authors of this study say, is even more distorted in an anti-Russian direction. One Georgian text they cite says that “the final goal of the colonial policy of Russia was the weakening and destruction of anti-Russian forces sin Georgia,” the takeover of Georgia’s natural wealth, and “the assimilation of the Georgian people.”
After 1917, this same text continues, “Soviet power pitilessly struggled against the national movement, attempting by all means to reduce Georgian national self-consciousness and deprive Georgian culture of its uniqueness and nationality,” a program that provoked rather than stilled the national movement there.
And as for World War II, the Georgian text says, “the majority of people conceived the war as a patriotic one. But another part of the Georgian people recognized perfectly well that in this case, Georgia is a conquered and dependent country, that namely Russia had deprived the Georgians of their state independence and … forcibly united it into the Soviet Union.”
But according to this new study, “the Soviet version of history” is mostly being driven out of the minds of young people mostly by neglect. Thus, according to a poll they cite, 58 percent of young Uzbeks have not heard about the 20th Congress of the CPSU, and 50 percent of young Armenians do not know anything about the February 1917 revolution.
The figures for other countries are even lower, and as the authors say, these figures are what the students in these countries claim. The real figures, the study concludes, are 10 to 20 percent lower, and suggest that it is clear that in many of these countries, eliminating any positive memory of the Soviet past is “one of the tasks of the national school.”
“If these tendencies continue,” the new book concludes, “then after 15 to 20 years, the events of the 20th century will be completely forgotten by the population. In the consciousness of the peoples of the former USSR will be formed an image of Russia as an evil empire which for centuries destroyed, oppressed and exploited them.”
(What this study does not do is focus on how some Russian texts are doing exactly the same thing, blaming all the problems of Russia on others and projecting Russian history implausibly back. To give but a single example of this: one new book traces “Russian” history from the time of Noah (traditciya.ru/e-store/books/98/422/).)
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