Window on Eurasia: ‘Ethnic Journalism’ Must Compensate for Decline in Shared Experiences among Nationalities in Post-Soviet Russia, Specialist Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, September 4 – Journalists specializing on ethnic issues must compensate for declines since 1991 in the number and quality of interactions among people of different nationalities in post-Soviet Russia, and because there are few such journalists in Moscow, that places an enormous responsibility on journalists in the non-Russian republics.
That is the message Margarita Lyange, the head of the Russian Federation’s Guild of Inter-Ethnic Journalism and advisor to the editor of Radio Russia, delivered in the course of an extensive interview published in the new issue of “Finnougria,” a magazine directed at the Finno-Ugric nations in Russia (www.finnougoria.ru/periodika/20810/).
And this is the task that such journalists, the vast majority of whom are women because of the lower pay and lower status of such positions now, must undertake in order to promote sympathy and empathy among these groups rather than contribute to a further decline in the ties among them and to the exacerbation of inter-ethnic tensions and even violence.
Often these journalists are forced to work not in the traditional print or electronic media but on the Internet, a place that can be extraordinarily useful when the sites involved produce regular news feeds rather than simply commentaries and reactions. Indeed, Lyange said, “the presence of regular news is already an indicator of quality” of journalism.
The Guild, which was created in 2003, not only seeks to unite those working in ethnic journalism across the Russian Federation, its president said, but it tries to increase the professionalism of such journalists, helping them to get grants and organizing seminars on how to cover ethnic issues.
As such, Lyange continued, her organization is combating what she described as the trend toward a demand only for “the universal journalist,” capable of covering anything. An ethnic journalist must simultaneously be a universal journalist and “also a fundraiser,” thus working “twice as much” as his colleagues.
Asked what Finno-Ugric ethnic journalists should do to overcome the difficulties many find in locating news about their groups, Lyange said that the current situation reflects “the problem of growth because national movements in recent years, unfortunately, have been inclined to focus only inward.”
“In our country,” she said, one of the problems is the inability to interact, to cooperate, to establish creative coalitions, to join unions and to exchange something with each other,” all skills which people had to a greater decree in Soviet times but lost after 1991 when people were forced to focus on survival rather than have “the luxury” of worrying about broader linkages.
Before the end of the Soviet system, people of various ethnic groups were more often thrown together in universities, the military and the workplace, and that contributed to “the habit of friendship, tolerance and normal interaction. But now, there remain very few of these places where various ethnic groups can intersect.”
That means ethnic journalists must fill in the gap, covering both individual groups and their interactions in ways that promote understanding rather than heighten isolation and tensions. Doing so requires sensitivity and skill, but promoting such common understanding and hence the basis for common identities above and beyond ethnic ones is “the task of ethnic journalism.”

Window on Eurasia: Chechens Indifferent to Change in Kadyrov’s Title, Experts Say

Paul Goble

Staunton, September 4 – While commentators in some non-Russian republics see plans to change the title of their chief executives from president to “head,” most Chechens, experts say, are “indifferent” to a change which they believe was initiated in Moscow and only given publicity by Ramzan Kadyrov.
According to a report in Kavkaz-Uzel today, the decision of the Chechen parliament, taken unanimously on Thursday, to give Kadyrov a different title is not agitating Chechens who generally believe that “the initiative for renaming was organized from Moscow” and will have little effect in Grozny (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/173782/).
While Kadyrov has insisted that he is the author of the idea of eliminating the title of republic president, Grozny analysts speaking on condition of anonymity said that Kadyrov was responsible for talking about the possibility of calling himself imam, something Moscow would never permit, Moscow itself was behind the push to call republic leaders “heads.”
“When some leaders are called ‘governors,’ others ‘presidents,’ and still a third group ‘heads,’” one of these sources said, it was somewhat “absurd.” Consequently, the center wants “all the leaders of the regions to be called “heads of republics, krays [or] oblasts” and only the Russian leader president.
Kadyrov, another unnamed Grozny expert said, “in fact is the implementer of all the ideas of the Kremlin directed at the step-by-step unitarization of the state and the rejection of federalism,” as was shown by Grozny’s annulment of its treaty with the center and its backing of Moscow’s decision to end the election of federal subject leaders.
Moreover, he continued, “beginning in 1991, the Chechen Republic was for the Kremlin a special space on which different variants of the political arrangements of the country were worked out.” And “Kadyrov simply executives the will of the Kremlin,” a reality that is underscored by the promptness with which other North Caucasus leaders follow his leads.
If the expert community in Grozny has been trying to interpret this latest move of Moscow and Kadyrov, ordinary Chechens, Kavkaz-Uzel says, are “quite indifferent” to giving Kadyrov a different title. One said he is “absolutely indifferent” as to what Kadyrov calls himself.
It is said, another resident of the Chechen capital added, that “Ramzan very much wanted to be called imam, but Moscow did not permit this.” As for himself, the resident said, he did not understand why Kadyrov did not seek to be called officially what he is called in the Chechen media already, “the shah of shahs.”
But if Chechens are indifferent, many other non-Russians are not. Two days ago, for example, the Circassian Khase movement issued a statement expressing its concerns that the elimination of the title of republic president would be followed by the elimination of republics as such (www.elot.ru/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1975&Itemid=1).
And even though Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that each federal subject should decide on its own what its head will be called, many in United Russia, the party of power, are talking about pushing through a federal law on this subject, all the more so because it appears likely that Tatarstan among other republics may not go along without such a law.
If indeed the Duma passes such legislation, that will further underscore the conclusion of the Grozny experts that the whole notion of dropping the presidential title in the republics was Moscow’s idea, and that in turn will likely generate more resistance among those who, like the Circassians, are worried about what the center will do next.