Paul Goble
Vienna, July 12 – What people call the state in Russia is not “a system of public institutions” as the state is in Western countrie but rather “a mechanism for the enrichment of the powers that be who control the excessively privatized substance called only by mistake is called the Russian Federation,” according to a leading Moscow political scientist.
In an interview posted on Kasparov.ru, Tatyana Vorozheykina, who teaches at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences, argues that the Russian state at the present time is “in fact a private corporation for the servicing of the private interests of a narrow group of people” (www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=4C35C34EC2C52).
And what is more, Vorozheykina says, “everyone knows these people. They come from one city, from one agency, from one dacha cooperative” – an obvious reference to the St. Petersburg mafia of Vladimir Putin. “And the essential quality of this arrangement of power is one involving the translation of orders, ideas and opinions from the top to the bottom.”
Only “if we begin in relation to the state and among ourselves to insist on a different type of social behavior, a type of cooperation, discussion and respect for the worth of another, only then will the state also begin to change,” with influence passing not from the top down but from the bottom up.
According to Vorozheykina, the notion that political life consists of “bosses” speaking to “fools” is “the essence of Russian power.” Moreover, she says, “this is a dead end in civilizational and human relations and in economics as well because such an individual cannot be the carrier of modernization … In unfreedom, innovations will not multiply.”
The Moscow scholar’s comments came as part of a discussion of the possibilities for Russia to modernize. Vorozheykina suggested that real modernization will take time and require steps that will lead individuals to defend themselves and their interests against the state rather than simply have the state build one or another new project.
That “process,” she argued, “must grow from below and not on orders of the powers that be and not on orders by the opposition. The art of the opposition consists in establishing fruitful cooperation and interrelationships with various initiative groups as happened in Poland at the end of the 1980s and in Brazil over the last 20 years.”
Asked for her reaction to the criticism of those on the left “who assert that even Western governments embody the power of capital,” the Moscow scholar said she agreed with some of this but believes that “the democratic arrangement of the state is already not a Western value but a universal one.”
Her interviewer then enquired about her reaction to the assertion that the Soviet powers that be proclaimed “the destruction of the state based on rule and subordination.” Voroheynkina’s answer is worth quoting at length because she addresses the issue far differently than most do.
In her view, she says, “at the time of the Revolution and the ensuing Civil War, there was a clash not of two forces but of three. The third force was popular resistance against autocracy, against the land owners, and against the terrible excesses of Russian capitalism, which in 1908 was not ready to eliminate the 12 hour day and introduce a ten-hour day.”
Vorozheykina says that this popular movement was “suppressed by the Soviet powers that be already in 1918. Its clearest political expression was of course the anarchist movement of Nestor Makhno. All that really remained from the revolution was then divided up between the Whites and the Reds.”
Vorozheykina says that she does not want to be misunderstood in this regard. Having given “anarchism as an example,” she says that she disagrees with it because anarchism “rejects the state as such” while she believes that “it is possible to reform the state” and that this is “the inevitable extension of civil society.”
“In an enormous space such as Russia,” she concludes, “one can’t do without a state but it must be built from the bottom up” rather than the other way around.” Anything else, she suggests, will not bring modernization but rather more of the same problems that Russia has suffered with for a long time.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Window on Eurasia: ‘Siberia’s Status within Russia Now Corresponds to Russia’s in the World,’ Economist Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 12 – Siberia increasingly is to Russia what Russia is to the world, a supplier of raw materials that those who are consuming them take without much thought to what is happening at their source economically or ecologically, a pattern that Siberians find increasingly unacceptable, according to a leading economist in that region.
At an academic conference last week in Ulan-Ude, Viktor Suslov, the deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called for new laws that would require Moscow to pay rent for its exploitation of Siberian resources (www.copah.info/news/mnenie-ekonomista-kakova-sibir-v-rossii-takova-rossiya-v-mire).
Arguing that “the status of Siberia inside Russia at the present moment corresponds to the position of Russia in the world at large,” Suslov said that Siberia must develop “a powerful industrial sector for processing raw materials, an effective system of innovations,” while not forgetting about protecting the environment.
Suslov attracted attention recently when he and his colleagues in Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk released a report saying that “the construction of large new hydro-electric stations on the territory of Siberia hardly can be considered rational” and that current projects in that area are “’simply criminal’” (www.plotina.net/superges-nsk-krsk/).
Suslov’s linking of environmental and economic concerns is increasingly common among Siberian experts and commentators, one that reflects both their anger about the current situation and their use for their own purposes of the anger many in Moscow now feel concerning the way in which Russia has been reduced to being a raw materials supplier to the world.
Another side of Siberian concerns about the way things are going in their region was suggested at the same conference by Arnold Tulokhonov, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences who heads the Baikal Institute of Natural Resource Use at the Siberian Division of the Academy.
In the keynote address to the meeting, Tulokhonov compared the economic development of Siberia with that in the adjoining regions of China, noting that the situation on the Russian side of the border does not stand up well regardless of whether one looks at transportation infrastructure, population maintenance, or trade.
The academician stressed that Moscow should take into consideration the reality that “95 percent of the European part of Russia depends on the natural resources of Siberia and the Far East” and thus be willing to give more back so that the enormous part of Russia east of the Urals will not continue to suffer, especially compared with China.
And he concluded that Moscow must also take steps to ensure that the state borders between Russian and China be “converted into a means for the economic development of the border territories” and that “ecological-economic problems of these regions must be resolved only on the basis of a consideration of the mutual interests of the neighboring states.”
Vienna, July 12 – Siberia increasingly is to Russia what Russia is to the world, a supplier of raw materials that those who are consuming them take without much thought to what is happening at their source economically or ecologically, a pattern that Siberians find increasingly unacceptable, according to a leading economist in that region.
At an academic conference last week in Ulan-Ude, Viktor Suslov, the deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called for new laws that would require Moscow to pay rent for its exploitation of Siberian resources (www.copah.info/news/mnenie-ekonomista-kakova-sibir-v-rossii-takova-rossiya-v-mire).
Arguing that “the status of Siberia inside Russia at the present moment corresponds to the position of Russia in the world at large,” Suslov said that Siberia must develop “a powerful industrial sector for processing raw materials, an effective system of innovations,” while not forgetting about protecting the environment.
Suslov attracted attention recently when he and his colleagues in Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk released a report saying that “the construction of large new hydro-electric stations on the territory of Siberia hardly can be considered rational” and that current projects in that area are “’simply criminal’” (www.plotina.net/superges-nsk-krsk/).
Suslov’s linking of environmental and economic concerns is increasingly common among Siberian experts and commentators, one that reflects both their anger about the current situation and their use for their own purposes of the anger many in Moscow now feel concerning the way in which Russia has been reduced to being a raw materials supplier to the world.
Another side of Siberian concerns about the way things are going in their region was suggested at the same conference by Arnold Tulokhonov, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences who heads the Baikal Institute of Natural Resource Use at the Siberian Division of the Academy.
In the keynote address to the meeting, Tulokhonov compared the economic development of Siberia with that in the adjoining regions of China, noting that the situation on the Russian side of the border does not stand up well regardless of whether one looks at transportation infrastructure, population maintenance, or trade.
The academician stressed that Moscow should take into consideration the reality that “95 percent of the European part of Russia depends on the natural resources of Siberia and the Far East” and thus be willing to give more back so that the enormous part of Russia east of the Urals will not continue to suffer, especially compared with China.
And he concluded that Moscow must also take steps to ensure that the state borders between Russian and China be “converted into a means for the economic development of the border territories” and that “ecological-economic problems of these regions must be resolved only on the basis of a consideration of the mutual interests of the neighboring states.”
Window on Eurasia: Butyrka Prison Now Helping to Spread Russian Orthodoxy
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 12 – Moscow’s notorious Butyrka Prison, through which more than 200 of the 1700 Orthodoxy’s new martyrs passed on their way to death in Soviet times, again has an active Orthodox Church, and its priests say that an accurate figure of the number of Russians who died for their faith there may be much higher.
On the one hand, as archivists note, records for many of the Orthodox priests who were sent to their deaths by the Communist Party’s anti-religious policy say only that they were first confined in “a Moscow prison,” without giving further details. Many of these undoubtedly passed through one of the 434 rooms of the Butyrka.
And on the other, as Archpriest Gleb Kaleda, the first post-Soviet pastor at the Moscow prison pointed out, “if we canonized all the new Russian martyrs, then the Russian Orthodox Church would have more saints than do all the other Orthodox churches in the world taken together.”
But today, thanks to the efforts of the ten Orthodox priests whom the late Patriarch Aleksii II appointed, the jail has become “a forge of cadres” for the Church, with many of the prisoners there become advocates for opening new Orthodox congregations in other parts of the Russian penitentiary system (www.pravmir.ru/tyurma-novomuchenikov/).
The Butyrka has a long and in many ways infamous history. Its first famous inmate was Yemelyan Pugachev in the late 18th century. After the 1905 revolution, it became the site of many executions. And in Soviet times, its cells, designed to hold 25 people, were often filled with as many as 170 prisoners.
Although the prison did not have plumbing until late in the 19th century, it did have an active Russian Orthodox Church. But that was closed by the Soviets in 1922, although some Orthodox services reportedly continued, albeit not be priests with the support of the state but rather by priests confined as prisoners.
With the collapse of USSR in 1991, the Moscow Patriarchate was able to formally re-open a church there – see its website, www.butyrka.st-nikolas.ru/. Even before that happened, an Orthodox priest regularly visited the prison, met with prisoners, and helped their relatives stay in touch with them by dispatching letters and packages to their onward places of incarceration.
Archpriest Gleb Kaleda headed this church until his death in 1994, not only conducting religious services but visiting with prisoners, some of whom he succeeded in baptizing. He told others that he had “never seen such serious prayers” being offered as among those sentenced to execution, an experience that led him to become an activist against the death penalty.
But after Father Gleb’s death, the situation of the church in Butyrka changed. Some priests continued to visit but regular services stopped. Priests said they were too busy, but in 2005, then-Patriarch Aleksii II took the unusual step of assigning 10 priests at once to divide their time between their parishes and the Butyrka church.
As one of their number, Archpriest Konstantin Kobelyev notes, some prisoners attend the church simply because it offers them a change “to get out of their cells” for a time. But despite that, he continues, the priests visiting the prison attempt to speak to each prisoner there and in the cells and “about half” of those they contact become regular attendees.
Moreover, the priests involved say, the attitudes of prisoners toward Orthodoxy “has strongly changed over the last years.” Earlier, prisoners were skeptical about religious figures and “did not trust” them. “Now, crosses, icons and spiritual literature are found in the cells,” forcing the wardens to say that no prisoner may have more than ten religious books at a time.
But the prison administration is not totally opposed to this religious activity. Once the number of religious prisoners reaches “a critical mass” in any cell, then “the general situation [there] changes for the better.” That is a reality that the Orthodox priests working at Butyrka are exploiting as much as they can.
The priests say that they encourage the prisoners to ask for the opening of prayer rooms or even churches in the penitentiary facilities to which they will sent to serve their sentences. In this way, the Orthodox leaders say, the Butyrka which was once a source of new martyrs is now “a forge of cadres” for the Church.
Vienna, July 12 – Moscow’s notorious Butyrka Prison, through which more than 200 of the 1700 Orthodoxy’s new martyrs passed on their way to death in Soviet times, again has an active Orthodox Church, and its priests say that an accurate figure of the number of Russians who died for their faith there may be much higher.
On the one hand, as archivists note, records for many of the Orthodox priests who were sent to their deaths by the Communist Party’s anti-religious policy say only that they were first confined in “a Moscow prison,” without giving further details. Many of these undoubtedly passed through one of the 434 rooms of the Butyrka.
And on the other, as Archpriest Gleb Kaleda, the first post-Soviet pastor at the Moscow prison pointed out, “if we canonized all the new Russian martyrs, then the Russian Orthodox Church would have more saints than do all the other Orthodox churches in the world taken together.”
But today, thanks to the efforts of the ten Orthodox priests whom the late Patriarch Aleksii II appointed, the jail has become “a forge of cadres” for the Church, with many of the prisoners there become advocates for opening new Orthodox congregations in other parts of the Russian penitentiary system (www.pravmir.ru/tyurma-novomuchenikov/).
The Butyrka has a long and in many ways infamous history. Its first famous inmate was Yemelyan Pugachev in the late 18th century. After the 1905 revolution, it became the site of many executions. And in Soviet times, its cells, designed to hold 25 people, were often filled with as many as 170 prisoners.
Although the prison did not have plumbing until late in the 19th century, it did have an active Russian Orthodox Church. But that was closed by the Soviets in 1922, although some Orthodox services reportedly continued, albeit not be priests with the support of the state but rather by priests confined as prisoners.
With the collapse of USSR in 1991, the Moscow Patriarchate was able to formally re-open a church there – see its website, www.butyrka.st-nikolas.ru/. Even before that happened, an Orthodox priest regularly visited the prison, met with prisoners, and helped their relatives stay in touch with them by dispatching letters and packages to their onward places of incarceration.
Archpriest Gleb Kaleda headed this church until his death in 1994, not only conducting religious services but visiting with prisoners, some of whom he succeeded in baptizing. He told others that he had “never seen such serious prayers” being offered as among those sentenced to execution, an experience that led him to become an activist against the death penalty.
But after Father Gleb’s death, the situation of the church in Butyrka changed. Some priests continued to visit but regular services stopped. Priests said they were too busy, but in 2005, then-Patriarch Aleksii II took the unusual step of assigning 10 priests at once to divide their time between their parishes and the Butyrka church.
As one of their number, Archpriest Konstantin Kobelyev notes, some prisoners attend the church simply because it offers them a change “to get out of their cells” for a time. But despite that, he continues, the priests visiting the prison attempt to speak to each prisoner there and in the cells and “about half” of those they contact become regular attendees.
Moreover, the priests involved say, the attitudes of prisoners toward Orthodoxy “has strongly changed over the last years.” Earlier, prisoners were skeptical about religious figures and “did not trust” them. “Now, crosses, icons and spiritual literature are found in the cells,” forcing the wardens to say that no prisoner may have more than ten religious books at a time.
But the prison administration is not totally opposed to this religious activity. Once the number of religious prisoners reaches “a critical mass” in any cell, then “the general situation [there] changes for the better.” That is a reality that the Orthodox priests working at Butyrka are exploiting as much as they can.
The priests say that they encourage the prisoners to ask for the opening of prayer rooms or even churches in the penitentiary facilities to which they will sent to serve their sentences. In this way, the Orthodox leaders say, the Butyrka which was once a source of new martyrs is now “a forge of cadres” for the Church.
Window on Eurasia: Butyrka Prison, through which Many of the Church’s New Martyrs Passed in Soviet Times Now Helping to Spread the Faith across the Ru
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 12 – Moscow’s notorious Butyrka Prison, through which more than 200 of the 1700 Orthodoxy’s new martyrs passed on their way to death in Soviet times, again has an active Orthodox Church, and its priests say that an accurate figure of the number of Russians who died for their faith there may be much higher.
On the one hand, as archivists note, records for many of the Orthodox priests who were sent to their deaths by the Communist Party’s anti-religious policy say only that they were first confined in “a Moscow prison,” without giving further details. Many of these undoubtedly passed through one of the 434 rooms of the Butyrka.
And on the other, as Archpriest Gleb Kaleda, the first post-Soviet pastor at the Moscow prison pointed out, “if we canonized all the new Russian martyrs, then the Russian Orthodox Church would have more saints than do all the other Orthodox churches in the world taken together.”
But today, thanks to the efforts of the ten Orthodox priests whom the late Patriarch Aleksii II appointed, the jail has become “a forge of cadres” for the Church, with many of the prisoners there become advocates for opening new Orthodox congregations in other parts of the Russian penitentiary system (www.pravmir.ru/tyurma-novomuchenikov/).
The Butyrka has a long and in many ways infamous history. Its first famous inmate was Yemelyan Pugachev in the late 18th century. After the 1905 revolution, it became the site of many executions. And in Soviet times, its cells, designed to hold 25 people, were often filled with as many as 170 prisoners.
Although the prison did not have plumbing until late in the 19th century, it did have an active Russian Orthodox Church. But that was closed by the Soviets in 1922, although some Orthodox services reportedly continued, albeit not be priests with the support of the state but rather by priests confined as prisoners.
With the collapse of USSR in 1991, the Moscow Patriarchate was able to formally re-open a church there – see its website, www.butyrka.st-nikolas.ru/. Even before that happened, an Orthodox priest regularly visited the prison, met with prisoners, and helped their relatives stay in touch with them by dispatching letters and packages to their onward places of incarceration.
Archpriest Gleb Kaleda headed this church until his death in 1994, not only conducting religious services but visiting with prisoners, some of whom he succeeded in baptizing. He told others that he had “never seen such serious prayers” being offered as among those sentenced to execution, an experience that led him to become an activist against the death penalty.
But after Father Gleb’s death, the situation of the church in Butyrka changed. Some priests continued to visit but regular services stopped. Priests said they were too busy, but in 2005, then-Patriarch Aleksii II took the unusual step of assigning 10 priests at once to divide their time between their parishes and the Butyrka church.
As one of their number, Archpriest Konstantin Kobelyev notes, some prisoners attend the church simply because it offers them a change “to get out of their cells” for a time. But despite that, he continues, the priests visiting the prison attempt to speak to each prisoner there and in the cells and “about half” of those they contact become regular attendees.
Moreover, the priests involved say, the attitudes of prisoners toward Orthodoxy “has strongly changed over the last years.” Earlier, prisoners were skeptical about religious figures and “did not trust” them. “Now, crosses, icons and spiritual literature are found in the cells,” forcing the wardens to say that no prisoner may have more than ten religious books at a time.
But the prison administration is not totally opposed to this religious activity. Once the number of religious prisoners reaches “a critical mass” in any cell, then “the general situation [there] changes for the better.” That is a reality that the Orthodox priests working at Butyrka are exploiting as much as they can.
The priests say that they encourage the prisoners to ask for the opening of prayer rooms or even churches in the penitentiary facilities to which they will sent to serve their sentences. In this way, the Orthodox leaders say, the Butyrka which was once a source of new martyrs is now “a forge of cadres” for the Church.
Vienna, July 12 – Moscow’s notorious Butyrka Prison, through which more than 200 of the 1700 Orthodoxy’s new martyrs passed on their way to death in Soviet times, again has an active Orthodox Church, and its priests say that an accurate figure of the number of Russians who died for their faith there may be much higher.
On the one hand, as archivists note, records for many of the Orthodox priests who were sent to their deaths by the Communist Party’s anti-religious policy say only that they were first confined in “a Moscow prison,” without giving further details. Many of these undoubtedly passed through one of the 434 rooms of the Butyrka.
And on the other, as Archpriest Gleb Kaleda, the first post-Soviet pastor at the Moscow prison pointed out, “if we canonized all the new Russian martyrs, then the Russian Orthodox Church would have more saints than do all the other Orthodox churches in the world taken together.”
But today, thanks to the efforts of the ten Orthodox priests whom the late Patriarch Aleksii II appointed, the jail has become “a forge of cadres” for the Church, with many of the prisoners there become advocates for opening new Orthodox congregations in other parts of the Russian penitentiary system (www.pravmir.ru/tyurma-novomuchenikov/).
The Butyrka has a long and in many ways infamous history. Its first famous inmate was Yemelyan Pugachev in the late 18th century. After the 1905 revolution, it became the site of many executions. And in Soviet times, its cells, designed to hold 25 people, were often filled with as many as 170 prisoners.
Although the prison did not have plumbing until late in the 19th century, it did have an active Russian Orthodox Church. But that was closed by the Soviets in 1922, although some Orthodox services reportedly continued, albeit not be priests with the support of the state but rather by priests confined as prisoners.
With the collapse of USSR in 1991, the Moscow Patriarchate was able to formally re-open a church there – see its website, www.butyrka.st-nikolas.ru/. Even before that happened, an Orthodox priest regularly visited the prison, met with prisoners, and helped their relatives stay in touch with them by dispatching letters and packages to their onward places of incarceration.
Archpriest Gleb Kaleda headed this church until his death in 1994, not only conducting religious services but visiting with prisoners, some of whom he succeeded in baptizing. He told others that he had “never seen such serious prayers” being offered as among those sentenced to execution, an experience that led him to become an activist against the death penalty.
But after Father Gleb’s death, the situation of the church in Butyrka changed. Some priests continued to visit but regular services stopped. Priests said they were too busy, but in 2005, then-Patriarch Aleksii II took the unusual step of assigning 10 priests at once to divide their time between their parishes and the Butyrka church.
As one of their number, Archpriest Konstantin Kobelyev notes, some prisoners attend the church simply because it offers them a change “to get out of their cells” for a time. But despite that, he continues, the priests visiting the prison attempt to speak to each prisoner there and in the cells and “about half” of those they contact become regular attendees.
Moreover, the priests involved say, the attitudes of prisoners toward Orthodoxy “has strongly changed over the last years.” Earlier, prisoners were skeptical about religious figures and “did not trust” them. “Now, crosses, icons and spiritual literature are found in the cells,” forcing the wardens to say that no prisoner may have more than ten religious books at a time.
But the prison administration is not totally opposed to this religious activity. Once the number of religious prisoners reaches “a critical mass” in any cell, then “the general situation [there] changes for the better.” That is a reality that the Orthodox priests working at Butyrka are exploiting as much as they can.
The priests say that they encourage the prisoners to ask for the opening of prayer rooms or even churches in the penitentiary facilities to which they will sent to serve their sentences. In this way, the Orthodox leaders say, the Butyrka which was once a source of new martyrs is now “a forge of cadres” for the Church.
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