Paul Goble
Staunton, August 1 – The authority of local Muslim leaders is so great in some villages in Daghestan that they can determine how all the members of the entire village will cast their votes, a situation that makes the struggle for influence over them between Moscow and radical groups even more important, according to a member of the Russian Social Chamber.
In an address to the Dombai forum in Karachayevo-Cherkessia last week, Ruslan Kurbanov, a political scientist who serves on the Social Chamber’s working group for the development of public dialogue and the institutions of civil society in the Caucasus, provided an example of the authority imams have (www.islam.ru/rus/2010-07-28/#33373).
According to Kurbanov, in one Daghestani village, “the opinion of one religious leader was sufficient to determine which candidate people would vote for.” All those taking part in the election voted as the imam instructed except for one, the political scientist noted. The exception was a militiaman “from a neighboring village who was out of the loop” concerning the situation.
How widespread this pattern of influence is in Daghestan is unclear, let alone how far it extends beyond that most Islamic republic of the Russian Federation. But even if it is true in a few places, it is certain to be viewed by many Russians as an indication that the struggle for the North Caucasus is increasingly going to be a struggle over the imams and mullahs there.
In other comments, Kurbanov said corruption and “the irresponsibility of bureaucrats” are the major causes of the problems of the problems of the North Caucasus. “Until everyone occupying this or that post sacrifices his political and economic interests, ceases to steal and thinks about the people rather than himself … blood will continue to flow here.”
According to the political scientist, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev “is well informed about what is taking place in the region.” That means there is “a chance” for the resolution of its problems. “However,” he added, “not everyone in Moscow is interested in stability in the North Caucasus.”
There are people there, he said, “who very much want stability and calm in the region, but there are also those who having fulfilled orders from abroad are striving to push the Caucasus into chaos.” As a result, the people and leaders in the region itself must take responsibility for what is occurring there.
“If there will not be a struggle with the corruption, immorality and irresponsibility of many officials in these republics itself, then no Moscow will be able to cope with that situation in which this region finds itself,” Kurbanov said.
Kurbanov’s comments were made to a forum, “Better Together…!” which attracted some 200 young people from the Caucasus and other parts of Russia, who represented “more than 70 social, social-political movements and organizations.” It was sponsored by the Russian Congress of Peoples of the Caucasus and the Karachay-Balkar Youth Development Foundation.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Window on Eurasia: 200,000 Russians Now Live and Work in China
Paul Goble
Staunton, August 1 – Moscow media routinely talk about the influx of ethnic Chinese into Russian territories in Siberia and the Far East, but they rarely pay much attention to a movement in the other direction, one that has resulted in nearly 200,000 Russians living and working in the Peoples Republic of China.
Only a tiny share of these are descendents of the once enormous Russian presence in Harbin and Manchuria, Beregrus.ru reports, noting that “they are already intermixed with the Chinese population [and therefore] impossible to uncover.” The basic mass of those people who arrived in the imperial period and after the Russian Civil War were later forced to leave.
The Russians of Harbin, the portal continues were “Russian people who respective the hospitality of the Chinese as well as their own traditions. The Chinese responded warmly to Russians,” the portal says, because “our compatriots, while remaining themselves and valuing and preserving their culture, with respect accepted the Chinese world” (beregrus.ru/?p=350).
Today, the site laments, “our compatriots in China are different.” They try “with all their strength to please the Chinese, to fit into their culture, and to emulate the civilized Chinese in every way” – not “of course” with the culture of the Chinese peasantry but rather with “Chinese business people who know English and the computer just like Europeans.”
The majority of these “Russians,” the site continues, “are forgetting their own culture, tradition and faith. More precisely,” Beregrus.ru says, many did not remember these things even earlier,” as a recent story from the Chinese newspaper “Rénmín Rìbào” now circulating on the Internet makes all too clear (russian.people.com.cn/31516/7069982.html).
The Chinese daily told the story of 22-year-old Elena Zhuzina, who came to Harbin from Russia’s Sakhalin oblast because, as the paper put it, she “had always dreamed about China.” After finishing school in Sakhalin, she enrolled in a Chinese university where she studied Chinese, was crowned “Beer Festival Queen,” and committed herself to remaining in China.
Beregrus.ru said with distain that “here is a completely typical story of the contemporary Russian emigration in China. In reality,” it continued, “the greatest opportunity for this remarkable woman is to become a mother of remarkable Chinese kids, the grandchildren of whom will tell their descendents that in their veins flows Russian blood.”
Why, these future Chinese citizens may ask? Because, in the words of the Russian portal, because “sometime in the past, their ancestor acquired for himself a Russian wife. Mostly probably,” it continued, “the Chinese progeny [of such a union] will not recall that this Russia wife was a beauty queen at a beer festival.”
In many respects, this image of a Russian voluntarily joining with the Chinese is even more disturbing to some Russians than the prospect that Chinese immigrants will overwhelm the declining population of Siberia and the Russian Far East because the former highlights something that underlies many of the deepest Russian fears.
That is the sense that Russian national identity may be far weaker than many like to think and that now and even more in the future, those currently identified as ethnic Russians will be assimilated by others rather than assimilating the latter as had been the case throughout most of the last millennium.
Staunton, August 1 – Moscow media routinely talk about the influx of ethnic Chinese into Russian territories in Siberia and the Far East, but they rarely pay much attention to a movement in the other direction, one that has resulted in nearly 200,000 Russians living and working in the Peoples Republic of China.
Only a tiny share of these are descendents of the once enormous Russian presence in Harbin and Manchuria, Beregrus.ru reports, noting that “they are already intermixed with the Chinese population [and therefore] impossible to uncover.” The basic mass of those people who arrived in the imperial period and after the Russian Civil War were later forced to leave.
The Russians of Harbin, the portal continues were “Russian people who respective the hospitality of the Chinese as well as their own traditions. The Chinese responded warmly to Russians,” the portal says, because “our compatriots, while remaining themselves and valuing and preserving their culture, with respect accepted the Chinese world” (beregrus.ru/?p=350).
Today, the site laments, “our compatriots in China are different.” They try “with all their strength to please the Chinese, to fit into their culture, and to emulate the civilized Chinese in every way” – not “of course” with the culture of the Chinese peasantry but rather with “Chinese business people who know English and the computer just like Europeans.”
The majority of these “Russians,” the site continues, “are forgetting their own culture, tradition and faith. More precisely,” Beregrus.ru says, many did not remember these things even earlier,” as a recent story from the Chinese newspaper “Rénmín Rìbào” now circulating on the Internet makes all too clear (russian.people.com.cn/31516/7069982.html).
The Chinese daily told the story of 22-year-old Elena Zhuzina, who came to Harbin from Russia’s Sakhalin oblast because, as the paper put it, she “had always dreamed about China.” After finishing school in Sakhalin, she enrolled in a Chinese university where she studied Chinese, was crowned “Beer Festival Queen,” and committed herself to remaining in China.
Beregrus.ru said with distain that “here is a completely typical story of the contemporary Russian emigration in China. In reality,” it continued, “the greatest opportunity for this remarkable woman is to become a mother of remarkable Chinese kids, the grandchildren of whom will tell their descendents that in their veins flows Russian blood.”
Why, these future Chinese citizens may ask? Because, in the words of the Russian portal, because “sometime in the past, their ancestor acquired for himself a Russian wife. Mostly probably,” it continued, “the Chinese progeny [of such a union] will not recall that this Russia wife was a beauty queen at a beer festival.”
In many respects, this image of a Russian voluntarily joining with the Chinese is even more disturbing to some Russians than the prospect that Chinese immigrants will overwhelm the declining population of Siberia and the Russian Far East because the former highlights something that underlies many of the deepest Russian fears.
That is the sense that Russian national identity may be far weaker than many like to think and that now and even more in the future, those currently identified as ethnic Russians will be assimilated by others rather than assimilating the latter as had been the case throughout most of the last millennium.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
