Paul Goble
Vienna, February 1 – With the retirement of Tatarstan President Mintimir Shaimiyev, the Kryashens, whom most Tatars view as a component of their nation but who see themselves as a separate people, have stepped up their campaign to gain status as an officially recognized nationality not only from Kazan but from Moscow as well.
And while one of their leaders says that the Kryashens have not received any support from the federal authorities and only “moral” support from the Russian Orthodox Church, this new Kryashen effort will likely strike most Tatars as another Russian effort to gain leverage against them.
That is all the more likely because in addition to the Kryashens, Russian speakers in Tatarstan are also exploiting the departure of Shaimiyev and the resulting interregnum before his successor can consolidate power to press demands both for more support of the Russian language and for less official backing for Tatar.
The Kryashens, the exact number of whom is unknown because most censuses except the one in 1926 included them within the Tatar nation, are sometimes called by those who deny them standing a separate nationality “Christian Tatars,” a reference to the origins they share with the Kazan Tatars in the Bulgar community in medieval times.
By the ninth and tenth centuries CE, there were both Christian and Muslim Bulgars. Indeed, they were sufficiently distinct that historians have documented a clash between them in the city of Bulgar in 1230. After Ivan the Terrible conquered Kazan in 1552, the number of “Christian Tatars” increased rapidly because of Muscovy’s russificatory policies.
Not surprisingly, the anger of Tatars toward those living among them who either had long followed or chose to convert to the religion of the conqueror was very great. And Kazan Tatar writers since tsarist times have insisted in the words of Shaimiyev, for example, that “religion does not affect nationality” (www.regnum.ru/news/1215960.html).
The Kryashens, who may number as many as 230,000 according to Moscow ethnographers, attracted attention in the run-up to the 2002 census, when they unsuccessfully sought to be included on the approved list of nationalities, and in 2003, when they appealed to President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Aleksii II to officially recognize them.
Putin and the patriarch did not respond, but Tatar officials were outraged by this effort. Shaimiyev said “the Kryashen problem was an artificial one,” and Tufan Minnullin, a Tatar State Council deputy, said that no one should worry because “30 to 40 years from now, those who call themselves ‘Kryashens’ will disappear among the Tatars.”
Such statements have provoked some of the Kryashens and have prompted them to announce plans for a constituent congress of the Union of Kryashens of Russia, a move that is clearly all the more timely in their estimation because of the departure of Shaimiyev and the possibility of a shift in the policies of both Kazan and Moscow.
In an interview with the Regnum.ru news agency, a service that along with russkayaliniya.ru has pushed the Kryashen issue in recent years, Vitaly Abramov, the head of the organizing committee for that congress and a longtime Kryashen activist, has articulated a much harder line than Kryashens did only a few months ago (www.regnum.ru/news/1248213.html).
Besides insisting that the Kryashens first appeared in the 5th century CE, that they are an independent nationality, and that they have been victims of Soviet, Russian and Tatar oppression, Abramov said that “the Tatar people is an artificially constructed ethnos, consisting of Turkic language peoples who professed Islam and have been united to oppose ‘Russian chauvinism.’”
At the same time, he said, the Kryashens do not want independence or even their own republic. Instead, they want de jure recognition by the state and not just the de facto kind they currently have. That is because they want schools and other institutions in their own language and the opportunity to form their own national-cultural autonomy.
At present, Abramov continued, the Kryashens in Tatarstan find themselves in a legal trap. On the one hand, the Tatar justice ministry refuses to register their national cultural autonomy because Kazan does not see them as an independent nationality, something Russian legislation requires.
But on the other, the federal national cultural autonomy of Tatars is now receiving 200 million rubles (6 million US dollars) every year but refuses to give any of that to the Kryashens, insisting, Abramov reports, that “’You are not ours; go create your own NCA and earn the money you need yourselves.’”
With their opponent Shaimiyev out of the way, the Kryashens and their Russian supporters will try to change that, possibly provoking the Tatars, all the more so because the Kryashen issue seems likely to be linked with an effort by Russians in Tatarstan to strip Tatar of its official status (www.rusk.ru/news_rl/2010/01/27/zawitit_russkij_yazyk_v_tatarstane/).
Monday, February 1, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Lack of Heat Prompts Some in Karelia to Think About Secession
Paul Goble
Vienna, February 1 – The FSB has opened a criminal case against Karelians who have distributed leaflets calling for their land to be re-attached to Finland, a campaign Russian security services say reflects shortcomings in anti-extremist efforts but one others in that northern region argue is the result of the failure of officials to keep the heat on in local buildings.
At the end of last week, German Shtadler, the head of the Karelian procuracy, announced that the FSB had brought the case after some unknown group distributed leaflets in the Sortavalsk district calling on people there to push for a referendum on transferring their district from Russia to Finland (stolica.onego.ru/news/135289.html).
No one has yet been arrested – although the local media suggested that the Finnish organization Pro Karelia which seeks the return of territory seized by Stalin after the Winter War -- but once someone is, Shtadler said, he or she will be charged under Article 280 of the Russian criminal code which sets punishments for those who call for carrying out extremist actions.
According to the prosecutor, Karelia “in recent times” has become a favorable breeding ground for “extremist manifestations,” with some of them rooted in ethnic clashes with Gastarbeiters from the North Caucasus as in Kondopoga and Kuitezha and others the reflection of the efforts to union leaders to press for higher wages and better working conditions.
Shtadler explained this trend by pointing to what he said were “essential failures in prophylactic work concerning extremist threats,” including ones committed by the organs of local self-administration although at least in the republic press reporting, he did not give any specifics about these “shortcomings.”
But another local politician, Lyudmila Afanasyeva, who is a member of the Karelian legislature, provided another reason why some people in the region might be interested in having their district transferred from Russia to Finland: They are cold and do not have confidence that the Russian authorities will help them (forum-msk.org/material/news/2334020.html).
Afanasyeva told the press that she herself is a resident of Sortavaly and understands its problems. “I am forced to work with students eight house a day in a room which is heated only to six degrees centigrade (43 degrees Fahrenheit) and then run home to my cold apartment where I live with two invalids.”
Not surprisingly, given the prominent coverage these charges and the 10,000-strong demonstration in Kaliningrad over the weekend have received in the Moscow media, some Russian opposition commentators have extrapolated from what be locally specific and relatively small actions.
Anatoly Baranov, the chief editor of the communist-oriented FORUM.msk website, for example, said that he was “delighted” that prosecutors in Karelia were so concerned with “the chief thing, the souls of the citizens” rather than their “frail bodies which in the name of high patriotic principles can freeze a little.”
After all, he continued, “spring will come” to the North Russian eventually. And he added that in his view, “the procuracy and the FSB of the Karelian Republic had shown a remarkable gift for seeing where things are headed.” Soon, he said, Russian officials are likely to bring charges of extremism against anyone calling for a referendum on anything.
Indeed, he suggested ironically, “it is already time to initiate criminal cases concerning extremist calls to observer the [Russian Federation] Constitution.” After all, that document guarantees citizens the right to seek and conduct referenda on any and all issues of concern to the Russian people.
Meanwhile, Petr Khomyakov, a radical nationalist critic of Moscow who now lives as a political exile in Ukraine, argued in an online commentary that the events in Karelia show that “it is physically impossible to live in the Russian Federation” and that the country will begin to come apart this year (ruscenter.info/index.php?name=pages&op=view&id=80).
He suggested that it is important not to view the Karelian case as an isolated one. Not long ago, he recalled, some people in Stavropol raised the possibility of separating from the Russian Federation and joining Belarus. That effort was dismissed in Moscow as the work of “urban madmen.”
But Khomyakov, without providing any sources, said that there is evidence that many influential people in that southern federal subject agreed with the call and that there were “analogous tendencies” in Belgorod and Kuban, where some want to unite with Ukraine, and in Smolensk, where at least a few residents want to join Belarus.
But these are sideshows, he suggested, from the rise of separatist attitudes in Siberia, attitudes that Khomyakov suggested reflect the wave of technogenic disasters and environmental pollution that enormous region has suffered recently and Moscow’s neglect of its social, economic and political problems.
The exiled commentator recalls the old Soviet anecdote about a lecture on the question, “Is there life on Mars?” One of the members of the audience said that “on Mars, it is possible that there is life.” But then he asked, “But when will that be the case in the USSR?” These are questions, he said, that ever more Russians are now asking about Russia.
Vienna, February 1 – The FSB has opened a criminal case against Karelians who have distributed leaflets calling for their land to be re-attached to Finland, a campaign Russian security services say reflects shortcomings in anti-extremist efforts but one others in that northern region argue is the result of the failure of officials to keep the heat on in local buildings.
At the end of last week, German Shtadler, the head of the Karelian procuracy, announced that the FSB had brought the case after some unknown group distributed leaflets in the Sortavalsk district calling on people there to push for a referendum on transferring their district from Russia to Finland (stolica.onego.ru/news/135289.html).
No one has yet been arrested – although the local media suggested that the Finnish organization Pro Karelia which seeks the return of territory seized by Stalin after the Winter War -- but once someone is, Shtadler said, he or she will be charged under Article 280 of the Russian criminal code which sets punishments for those who call for carrying out extremist actions.
According to the prosecutor, Karelia “in recent times” has become a favorable breeding ground for “extremist manifestations,” with some of them rooted in ethnic clashes with Gastarbeiters from the North Caucasus as in Kondopoga and Kuitezha and others the reflection of the efforts to union leaders to press for higher wages and better working conditions.
Shtadler explained this trend by pointing to what he said were “essential failures in prophylactic work concerning extremist threats,” including ones committed by the organs of local self-administration although at least in the republic press reporting, he did not give any specifics about these “shortcomings.”
But another local politician, Lyudmila Afanasyeva, who is a member of the Karelian legislature, provided another reason why some people in the region might be interested in having their district transferred from Russia to Finland: They are cold and do not have confidence that the Russian authorities will help them (forum-msk.org/material/news/2334020.html).
Afanasyeva told the press that she herself is a resident of Sortavaly and understands its problems. “I am forced to work with students eight house a day in a room which is heated only to six degrees centigrade (43 degrees Fahrenheit) and then run home to my cold apartment where I live with two invalids.”
Not surprisingly, given the prominent coverage these charges and the 10,000-strong demonstration in Kaliningrad over the weekend have received in the Moscow media, some Russian opposition commentators have extrapolated from what be locally specific and relatively small actions.
Anatoly Baranov, the chief editor of the communist-oriented FORUM.msk website, for example, said that he was “delighted” that prosecutors in Karelia were so concerned with “the chief thing, the souls of the citizens” rather than their “frail bodies which in the name of high patriotic principles can freeze a little.”
After all, he continued, “spring will come” to the North Russian eventually. And he added that in his view, “the procuracy and the FSB of the Karelian Republic had shown a remarkable gift for seeing where things are headed.” Soon, he said, Russian officials are likely to bring charges of extremism against anyone calling for a referendum on anything.
Indeed, he suggested ironically, “it is already time to initiate criminal cases concerning extremist calls to observer the [Russian Federation] Constitution.” After all, that document guarantees citizens the right to seek and conduct referenda on any and all issues of concern to the Russian people.
Meanwhile, Petr Khomyakov, a radical nationalist critic of Moscow who now lives as a political exile in Ukraine, argued in an online commentary that the events in Karelia show that “it is physically impossible to live in the Russian Federation” and that the country will begin to come apart this year (ruscenter.info/index.php?name=pages&op=view&id=80).
He suggested that it is important not to view the Karelian case as an isolated one. Not long ago, he recalled, some people in Stavropol raised the possibility of separating from the Russian Federation and joining Belarus. That effort was dismissed in Moscow as the work of “urban madmen.”
But Khomyakov, without providing any sources, said that there is evidence that many influential people in that southern federal subject agreed with the call and that there were “analogous tendencies” in Belgorod and Kuban, where some want to unite with Ukraine, and in Smolensk, where at least a few residents want to join Belarus.
But these are sideshows, he suggested, from the rise of separatist attitudes in Siberia, attitudes that Khomyakov suggested reflect the wave of technogenic disasters and environmental pollution that enormous region has suffered recently and Moscow’s neglect of its social, economic and political problems.
The exiled commentator recalls the old Soviet anecdote about a lecture on the question, “Is there life on Mars?” One of the members of the audience said that “on Mars, it is possible that there is life.” But then he asked, “But when will that be the case in the USSR?” These are questions, he said, that ever more Russians are now asking about Russia.
Window on Eurasia: Internet Editions of Crimean Tatar Newspapers Disappearing
Paul Goble
Vienna, February 1 – Prior to the rise of the Internet, many students of minority nationalities often found themselves in the position of those interested in medieval heresies: the only information about them most of the time was provided by media outlets that reflected the views of their larger and more powerful opponents.
The Internet appeared to provide a way out of this dilemma. Given the relatively low cost of putting up a site, many groups were suddenly in a position to communicate their news and perspectives to far more people than ever before. And many students of these communities felt that they had entered a golden age.
But not everything has worked out as many had hoped. On the one hand, there has been an explosion of websites, often providing the kind of information no one could have dreamed earlier of obtaining, but if many were launched, few sites continued to be updated for long, limiting their value to those seeking to trace what is going on.
And on the other, both because so many sites were so short-lived and because some of them were so parochial or tendentious, the most important of these sites were those of local newspapers, not only because they often reflected higher journalistic standards but also because they appeared regularly over a significant period of time.
Now, however, many of these newspapers are going off line, the victims of the coming together of three factors: First, the impact of the economic crisis on the financial well-being of media outlets of all kinds, few of whom have yet figured out how to make a profit on their Internet publications without undermining the sale of their print versions.
Second, these problems are hitting media outlets directed at relatively small audiences particularly hard. When they have only a few tens of thousands of potential readers, print outlets cannot rely on sales or advertising but must depend on backers, many of whom first try to cut off all “extra” expenses such as Internet operations before pulling the plug entirely.
And third, as important as these newspaper sites are to those who use them, the number of visitors to these outlets is often quite low, making them less potentially profitable than other websites. Consequently, the golden age of Internet newspapers for minority nationalities in the former Soviet space may be ending before it really began.
Just how serious this trend may be for those who care about these groups is suggested by Mubeyyin B. Altan of the US-based Crimean Tatar Research and Information Center in a remarkable and moving post yesterday on Yahoo’s Crimea-L list entitled “First Went ‘Yani Dunya’ and Then … (crimea-l@yahoogroups.com)
Altan recalls that in 1971, he and other Crimean Tatar émigrés were able to subscribe to “Lenin Bayragi,” the only Crimean Tatar newspaper in Soviet times. Although “strictly controlled” by the Uzbek SSR Communist Party, it was the emigration’s “life line” to the Crimean Tatars in exile in Central Asia.
At the end of Soviet times, “Lenin Bayragi” moved along with so many Crimean Tatars back from Central Asia to Crimea where it continued to come out under the title “Yani dunya.” Unfortunately, Crimean Tatars in the US couldn’t subscribe to it, but Altan and his friends treasured the copies that they or their relatives and friends were able to acquire and send them.
But several years ago, “Yani Dunya” launched an online edition, allowing the diaspora in both the West and Central Asia to stay “connected to Crimea.” This “magical” medium, he continues, soon was exploited by other Crimean Tatar newspapers, both those in Crimean Tatar like “Kirim” and those like “Golos Krima” in Russian.
Other Crimean Tatar outlets followed – Qirim Haber Ajansi (QHA), which features stories in English, Turkish and Russia and also streams television, and “Avdet,” the newspaper of the Crimean Tatar National Mejlis. The future seemed bright for a people whose existence many around the world had denied.
Unfortunately, Altan continues, “the Internet magic did not last long for the semi-independent Crimean Tatar newspapers, which [have been such a] significant source of news and information on Crimea and on the Crimean Tatars” both for members of that community and for those who want to know about them.
“One by one,” he laments, “the Crimean Tatar newspapers [have dropped] their Internet publications.” “Yani Dunya” put up its last electronic version in April 2009; then the web version of “Kirim” stopped at the end of June 2009; and in December, the Russian-language “Golos Krima” ceased to appear online, “mainly because of financial difficulties.”
QHA reports that another Internet newspaper, “Kirim Ahvali,” has been launched to provide information about the work of the Kurultay Rukh political group, Altan says. That is welcome news if indeed the new outlet fills the information gap left by the online demise of the others.
The death of a newspaper is always a tragedy, but the demise of Internet papers from places like Crimea is an even greater one, not only because of the continuing crisis there but also because it serves as a warning to those who believed that the Internet would change everything by giving those who had been kept silent a way of speaking to the world.
Vienna, February 1 – Prior to the rise of the Internet, many students of minority nationalities often found themselves in the position of those interested in medieval heresies: the only information about them most of the time was provided by media outlets that reflected the views of their larger and more powerful opponents.
The Internet appeared to provide a way out of this dilemma. Given the relatively low cost of putting up a site, many groups were suddenly in a position to communicate their news and perspectives to far more people than ever before. And many students of these communities felt that they had entered a golden age.
But not everything has worked out as many had hoped. On the one hand, there has been an explosion of websites, often providing the kind of information no one could have dreamed earlier of obtaining, but if many were launched, few sites continued to be updated for long, limiting their value to those seeking to trace what is going on.
And on the other, both because so many sites were so short-lived and because some of them were so parochial or tendentious, the most important of these sites were those of local newspapers, not only because they often reflected higher journalistic standards but also because they appeared regularly over a significant period of time.
Now, however, many of these newspapers are going off line, the victims of the coming together of three factors: First, the impact of the economic crisis on the financial well-being of media outlets of all kinds, few of whom have yet figured out how to make a profit on their Internet publications without undermining the sale of their print versions.
Second, these problems are hitting media outlets directed at relatively small audiences particularly hard. When they have only a few tens of thousands of potential readers, print outlets cannot rely on sales or advertising but must depend on backers, many of whom first try to cut off all “extra” expenses such as Internet operations before pulling the plug entirely.
And third, as important as these newspaper sites are to those who use them, the number of visitors to these outlets is often quite low, making them less potentially profitable than other websites. Consequently, the golden age of Internet newspapers for minority nationalities in the former Soviet space may be ending before it really began.
Just how serious this trend may be for those who care about these groups is suggested by Mubeyyin B. Altan of the US-based Crimean Tatar Research and Information Center in a remarkable and moving post yesterday on Yahoo’s Crimea-L list entitled “First Went ‘Yani Dunya’ and Then … (crimea-l@yahoogroups.com)
Altan recalls that in 1971, he and other Crimean Tatar émigrés were able to subscribe to “Lenin Bayragi,” the only Crimean Tatar newspaper in Soviet times. Although “strictly controlled” by the Uzbek SSR Communist Party, it was the emigration’s “life line” to the Crimean Tatars in exile in Central Asia.
At the end of Soviet times, “Lenin Bayragi” moved along with so many Crimean Tatars back from Central Asia to Crimea where it continued to come out under the title “Yani dunya.” Unfortunately, Crimean Tatars in the US couldn’t subscribe to it, but Altan and his friends treasured the copies that they or their relatives and friends were able to acquire and send them.
But several years ago, “Yani Dunya” launched an online edition, allowing the diaspora in both the West and Central Asia to stay “connected to Crimea.” This “magical” medium, he continues, soon was exploited by other Crimean Tatar newspapers, both those in Crimean Tatar like “Kirim” and those like “Golos Krima” in Russian.
Other Crimean Tatar outlets followed – Qirim Haber Ajansi (QHA), which features stories in English, Turkish and Russia and also streams television, and “Avdet,” the newspaper of the Crimean Tatar National Mejlis. The future seemed bright for a people whose existence many around the world had denied.
Unfortunately, Altan continues, “the Internet magic did not last long for the semi-independent Crimean Tatar newspapers, which [have been such a] significant source of news and information on Crimea and on the Crimean Tatars” both for members of that community and for those who want to know about them.
“One by one,” he laments, “the Crimean Tatar newspapers [have dropped] their Internet publications.” “Yani Dunya” put up its last electronic version in April 2009; then the web version of “Kirim” stopped at the end of June 2009; and in December, the Russian-language “Golos Krima” ceased to appear online, “mainly because of financial difficulties.”
QHA reports that another Internet newspaper, “Kirim Ahvali,” has been launched to provide information about the work of the Kurultay Rukh political group, Altan says. That is welcome news if indeed the new outlet fills the information gap left by the online demise of the others.
The death of a newspaper is always a tragedy, but the demise of Internet papers from places like Crimea is an even greater one, not only because of the continuing crisis there but also because it serves as a warning to those who believed that the Internet would change everything by giving those who had been kept silent a way of speaking to the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
