Paul Goble
Staunton, September 22 – Ingushetia President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov’s visit to South Ossetia and his pledge to sign a cooperation agreement with that republic are consistent with Russian policy and presumably please Moscow, but they are infuriating many Ingush and some Ossetians who have a less than positive relationship with the other ethnic group.
And this extraordinarily sensitive situation in which Yevkurov now finds himself is yet another unanticipated consequence for the North Caucasus and hence for the Russian Federation more generally of Moscow’s decision to extend diplomatic recognition to South Ossetia (and Abkhazia) after the August 2008 war with Georgia (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/174530/).
The Ingush president visited Tskhinval as part of the Russian Federation delegation taking part in the 20th anniversary of South Ossetia’s declaration of independence. While there, Yevkurov said that Ingushetia had long wanted to provide assistance to South Ossetia,” but he added that “it is one thing to propose” and quite another to provide or accept it.
Indeed, he said, he was now prepared to sign an agreement providing such assistance, but Yevkurov’s diplomatic language reflects hostility between the Ingush and the Ossetians especially in the wake of the Vladikavkaz terrorist action earlier this month that claimed 17 lives and nearly 200 wounded and that some say had links to problems between the two ethnic groups.
After that attack, Konstantin Pukhayev, the first deputy head of the Presidential Administration of the South Ossetia, noting that he is “a supporter of harsh measures in the struggle with terrorism,” called for “the complete closure of the administrative border” between North Ossetia and Ingushetia, hardly an expression of friendship.
As Kavkaz Uzel.ru notes, Pukhayev was forced to back down the following day when he issued a statement that he “did not have in mind the complete closure of the border but only its reinforcement.” Nonetheless, the damage was done, and many Ingush saw this as more evidence of the hostility of Ossetians, whether in the north or the south, to themselves.
A great problem for Yevkurov and hence for Moscow, however, may lie with the negative reaction of some in Ingushetia to their president’s visit to the south. Yevkurov’s own advisor for work with public organizations, Aslan Kodzoyev, denounced Pukhayev’s statement as undermining the possibilities for fraternal relations.
He suggested that Yevkurov should have reacted to the South Ossetians more forcefully than he did but noted that “alas, Yevkurov behaved as a soldier of Russia and not as a ruler of the Ingush,” a choice that has the effect of reducing still further his authority in Ingushetia and the chances for a better future.
Kodzoyev acknowledged that officials in his position don’t normally express themselves as he has or even have the right to do so. But he suggested that Yevkurov’s failure to stand up for the Ingush was serious mistake and that he, one of the president’s advisors, had no choice but to go public with a denunciation of it.
Perhaps no one should have been surprised by his action. After all, tensions between the Ingush and the Ossetians have been relatively high since 1992 when serious clashes in the Prigorodny district of North Ossetia between Ossetians and Ingush led to deaths and the flight of part of the population.
But this pattern of reactions in Ingushetia and South Ossetia are an indication of one of the ways Moscow’s recognition of the two breakaway republics is creating problems for the Russian Federation within its own borders, increasing rather than decreasing tensions, whatever officials may proclaim.
And while that is unlikely to cause Moscow to review its decision to recognize these republics, it may mean that Russian officials will be more careful than they have been up to now in promoting contacts between republics which Moscow recognizes as independent countries and other republics which it sees as its own federal subjects.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Opportunity and Human Costs of Sochi Olympics Hitting Home with Russians
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 22 – The ecological and financial costs of Vladimir Putin’s plans to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics in the southern city of Sochi have long agitated relatively small groups in the Russian population such as the Circassians, but this week, the opportunity and human costs of the games have begun to hit home among a far broader swath of the population.
On the one hand, Russians are having to confront the reality that the money being spent to get ready for Sochi is money that is not being spent on roads and other infrastructure. And on the other, they are learning that ever more Russian draftees will have to be sent to the North Caucasus if Moscow is to have any chance of pacifying that region before the competition.
The Russian prime minister has made preparations for the games a matter of prestige both for himself and the country, something that he and many in Russia are likely to see as even more important given the unfortunate situation that has arisen in India over the last several weeks as that country prepares to host the Commonwealth Games.
But this commitment means that money and construction teams that might be used to address infrastructure problems in Moscow and other parts of Russia are being dispatched instead to Sochi, creating a situation in which the Sochi Olympics may “threaten” Moscow with more traffic jams (www.specletter.com/obcshestvo/2010-09-22/olimpiade-v-sochi-grozjat-moskovskie-probki-.html).
That danger was highlighted in the course of a hearing yesterday of the Social Chamber, during the course of which participants discussed how specialized construction teams and by implication money that had been directed to other parts of Russia were now being redirected to Sochi construction projects alone.
That report comes at a time when Russians are increasingly anger about the low quality of the roads in their country, long lines because of the increasing number of cars, and trash on the streets. As an article in “Novyye izvestiya” put it today, many Russians feel this situation is now “worse than right after the war” (www.newizv.ru/news/2010-09-22/133607/).
That article details just how angry Russians are about the situation on the highways and the failure of the powers that be to address the situation despite the constant reference to enormous sums being available. If a large number of them conclude that some of this money is going to Sochi instead, they are likely to be furious.
But far greater anger is already present in Leningrad oblast where military commanders have told the Solders Mothers’ Committee that new draftees from that northern Russian region are being trained for dispatch to the troubled North Caucasian republic of Daghestan “in connection with the Olympics in Sochi” (svpressa.ru/society/article/30780/).
The Committee has three reasons for anger: First, senior Russian officials and commanders have at various times promised that draftees won’t be sent to hotspots. Second, the dispatch of new draftees to Daghestan only underscores just how unsettled that region remains. And third, commanders are explaining it by invoking the Olympics rather than counter-terrorism.
Obviously, Moscow will find it difficult to stage the Olympics in Sochi if the North Caucasus is still unstable. Indeed, Presidential Plenipotentiary Aleksandr Khloponin suggested at a meeting in Makhachkala that all his work in the region was being conducted with an eye toward the Games (www.ansar.ru/rfsng/2010/09/22/6905).
Growing recognition of the opportunity causes because of construction projects in Sochi and of the very human costs of trying to impose order in Daghestan, which after all is on the other side of the North Caucasus than Sochi, because of the need to provide security for visitors to games more than three years hence is going to undermine enthusiasm for the Olympics.
None of that means that Moscow and especially Putin, who has made the games his signature effort, are likely to cancel the Sochi Olympics, but it does mean that the way in which preparation for these games is sucking up money and lives is going to lead more Russians and others to question the wisdom of holding them there at all.
And especially in the upcoming electoral seasons, such public skepticism is likely to undermine the authority of those behind the games and may even become the basis for political campaigns by the opposition. If those things alone happen, what Putin planned as his great victory could yet prove something very different.
Staunton, September 22 – The ecological and financial costs of Vladimir Putin’s plans to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics in the southern city of Sochi have long agitated relatively small groups in the Russian population such as the Circassians, but this week, the opportunity and human costs of the games have begun to hit home among a far broader swath of the population.
On the one hand, Russians are having to confront the reality that the money being spent to get ready for Sochi is money that is not being spent on roads and other infrastructure. And on the other, they are learning that ever more Russian draftees will have to be sent to the North Caucasus if Moscow is to have any chance of pacifying that region before the competition.
The Russian prime minister has made preparations for the games a matter of prestige both for himself and the country, something that he and many in Russia are likely to see as even more important given the unfortunate situation that has arisen in India over the last several weeks as that country prepares to host the Commonwealth Games.
But this commitment means that money and construction teams that might be used to address infrastructure problems in Moscow and other parts of Russia are being dispatched instead to Sochi, creating a situation in which the Sochi Olympics may “threaten” Moscow with more traffic jams (www.specletter.com/obcshestvo/2010-09-22/olimpiade-v-sochi-grozjat-moskovskie-probki-.html).
That danger was highlighted in the course of a hearing yesterday of the Social Chamber, during the course of which participants discussed how specialized construction teams and by implication money that had been directed to other parts of Russia were now being redirected to Sochi construction projects alone.
That report comes at a time when Russians are increasingly anger about the low quality of the roads in their country, long lines because of the increasing number of cars, and trash on the streets. As an article in “Novyye izvestiya” put it today, many Russians feel this situation is now “worse than right after the war” (www.newizv.ru/news/2010-09-22/133607/).
That article details just how angry Russians are about the situation on the highways and the failure of the powers that be to address the situation despite the constant reference to enormous sums being available. If a large number of them conclude that some of this money is going to Sochi instead, they are likely to be furious.
But far greater anger is already present in Leningrad oblast where military commanders have told the Solders Mothers’ Committee that new draftees from that northern Russian region are being trained for dispatch to the troubled North Caucasian republic of Daghestan “in connection with the Olympics in Sochi” (svpressa.ru/society/article/30780/).
The Committee has three reasons for anger: First, senior Russian officials and commanders have at various times promised that draftees won’t be sent to hotspots. Second, the dispatch of new draftees to Daghestan only underscores just how unsettled that region remains. And third, commanders are explaining it by invoking the Olympics rather than counter-terrorism.
Obviously, Moscow will find it difficult to stage the Olympics in Sochi if the North Caucasus is still unstable. Indeed, Presidential Plenipotentiary Aleksandr Khloponin suggested at a meeting in Makhachkala that all his work in the region was being conducted with an eye toward the Games (www.ansar.ru/rfsng/2010/09/22/6905).
Growing recognition of the opportunity causes because of construction projects in Sochi and of the very human costs of trying to impose order in Daghestan, which after all is on the other side of the North Caucasus than Sochi, because of the need to provide security for visitors to games more than three years hence is going to undermine enthusiasm for the Olympics.
None of that means that Moscow and especially Putin, who has made the games his signature effort, are likely to cancel the Sochi Olympics, but it does mean that the way in which preparation for these games is sucking up money and lives is going to lead more Russians and others to question the wisdom of holding them there at all.
And especially in the upcoming electoral seasons, such public skepticism is likely to undermine the authority of those behind the games and may even become the basis for political campaigns by the opposition. If those things alone happen, what Putin planned as his great victory could yet prove something very different.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Patriarchate to Open More Churches, Seek Property Rights over Places It Never Owned, and Expand Missionary Work with Muslims
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 22 – Even as it opposes the construction of a single new mosque in the Russian capital, the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church is planning to open hundreds of new churches there, seeking ownership over places it never owned before, and, most ominously, expanding missionary work among Muslim immigrant workers.
Along with many Moscow residents and officials, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church have opposed the construction of a new mosque in Tekstilshchiki, even though it would be only the fifth mosque in the city and mean that there would be one place for prayer for every 500,000 “ethnic Muslims,” a term referring to members of historically Islamic peoples.
That case has sparked intense discussion in the media with some Orthodox figures like Roman Silantyev insisting that the Russian capital and indeed the Russian Federation at large have too many mosques already, while Muslim leader point to the enormous crowds of the faithful who have to pray in the streets because there is no room in the few existing mosques.
But even as that debate has intensified, the Moscow Patriarchate is moving in three directions likely to further exacerbate inter-religious tensions not only in the Russian capital but in the Russian Federation as a whole, tensions that almost certainly will acquire an ethnic dimension, lead to more violence in the cities, and greater instability in the North Caucasus.
First, the Patriarchate, with the support of some officials, is pushing for the hundreds of new churches there to bring their number “up to ‘the pre-revolutionary level.’” At present, the hierarchs say, there is only one church in Moscow for every 40,000 “ethnic Orthodox” (www.mk.ru/social/article/2010/09/20/530794-doroga-k-hramu-shagovoy-dostupnosti.html).
Patriarch Kirill himself has told Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov that “the normalization of the situation” in the Russian capital requires building “on the order of 600 new churches,” many far larger than existing religious sites. So far, however, the city administration has given approval for building only 200, “Moskovsky komsomolets” reports.
The city’s reluctance to agree to all of Kirill’s requests reflects less an unwillingness to help the Church than the shortage of available land and legal restrictions against the seizure of property by a secular state in order to build religious facilities, the paper continues. But it also undoubtedly reflects concerns about Muslim reaction to such a building program.
To get around that, the Russian Orthodox Church has come up with plans to construct 100 to 150 additional churches that can be rapidly assembled or disassembled in parks and squares, a project that if it is carried out will not only increase the total number of Orthodox Churches there by 350 but put them where they would be especially visible.
Second, with the support of the central powers that be, the Russian Orthodox Church is helping to push through the Duma legislation that its authors say will restore to the Moscow Patriarchate property that was seized from it by the Soviet authorities. That measure has now passed first reading, but it is already raising some serious questions.
While no one challenges the notion that the Communist regime took property that the Church was using just as it seized facilities being used by other faiths, “Kommersant” pointed out today that the Moscow Patriarchate and its supporters are being somewhat disingenuous in their discussion of this issue (www.kommersant.ru/doc-y.aspx?DocsID=1508176).
That is because prior to 1917, there was a fundamental difference in the status of property used by the Russian Orthodox Church and that used by Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Protestants and others. In Imperial times, the ROC did not own property: it used property owned by the state itself, while the other religions did have ownership of their facilities.
That does not mean that the Russian Orthodox Church should not regain the use of facilities that the Bolsheviks took, but it does mean that the law as currently drafted is problematic. Indeed, as the paper suggests, its provisions are entirely accurate for all the non-Orthodox faiths but not at all for the church intended as its primary beneficiary.
And third, there is a new push among some close to the Patriarchate for expanding Russian Orthodox missionary activity among immigrant workers in the Russian Federation, a group who come primarily from the traditionally Muslim countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
In a comment carried by Interfax today – which may be a trial balloon – Archpriest Dionisii Pozdnyaev of the Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Church in Hong Kong called for the Moscow church to take up the task of “adapting” immigrants who have arrived in Russia (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=37477).
The religious should stop talking about “the problems of immigration” and the “advance of Islam” and start doing something about. Specifically, he said, the Church should promote the Russian language, instruction in Russian Orthodox culture, and a system of social adaptation to Russian realities.
Such a program, the priest said, by showing real love and concern” to the migrants on whom Russia, given its demographic difficulties, must rely, “would draw these people to Christ.”
Even though it is cast as a program promoting acculturation and assimilation, such efforts would not only look like missionary work but would represent the clearest violation yet of the informal compact among the leaders of Russia’s four “traditional” religions not to try to convert members of their faiths.
It is likely that Moscow Patriarchate would insist that immigrants do not fall under the restrictions imposed by that compact and that many of them are not Islamic believers but only “ethnic Muslims.” But that argument would satisfy few Muslims, especially since the Russian Orthodox Church has taken the lead in insisting that all ethnic Russians are truly Orthodox.
Staunton, September 22 – Even as it opposes the construction of a single new mosque in the Russian capital, the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church is planning to open hundreds of new churches there, seeking ownership over places it never owned before, and, most ominously, expanding missionary work among Muslim immigrant workers.
Along with many Moscow residents and officials, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church have opposed the construction of a new mosque in Tekstilshchiki, even though it would be only the fifth mosque in the city and mean that there would be one place for prayer for every 500,000 “ethnic Muslims,” a term referring to members of historically Islamic peoples.
That case has sparked intense discussion in the media with some Orthodox figures like Roman Silantyev insisting that the Russian capital and indeed the Russian Federation at large have too many mosques already, while Muslim leader point to the enormous crowds of the faithful who have to pray in the streets because there is no room in the few existing mosques.
But even as that debate has intensified, the Moscow Patriarchate is moving in three directions likely to further exacerbate inter-religious tensions not only in the Russian capital but in the Russian Federation as a whole, tensions that almost certainly will acquire an ethnic dimension, lead to more violence in the cities, and greater instability in the North Caucasus.
First, the Patriarchate, with the support of some officials, is pushing for the hundreds of new churches there to bring their number “up to ‘the pre-revolutionary level.’” At present, the hierarchs say, there is only one church in Moscow for every 40,000 “ethnic Orthodox” (www.mk.ru/social/article/2010/09/20/530794-doroga-k-hramu-shagovoy-dostupnosti.html).
Patriarch Kirill himself has told Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov that “the normalization of the situation” in the Russian capital requires building “on the order of 600 new churches,” many far larger than existing religious sites. So far, however, the city administration has given approval for building only 200, “Moskovsky komsomolets” reports.
The city’s reluctance to agree to all of Kirill’s requests reflects less an unwillingness to help the Church than the shortage of available land and legal restrictions against the seizure of property by a secular state in order to build religious facilities, the paper continues. But it also undoubtedly reflects concerns about Muslim reaction to such a building program.
To get around that, the Russian Orthodox Church has come up with plans to construct 100 to 150 additional churches that can be rapidly assembled or disassembled in parks and squares, a project that if it is carried out will not only increase the total number of Orthodox Churches there by 350 but put them where they would be especially visible.
Second, with the support of the central powers that be, the Russian Orthodox Church is helping to push through the Duma legislation that its authors say will restore to the Moscow Patriarchate property that was seized from it by the Soviet authorities. That measure has now passed first reading, but it is already raising some serious questions.
While no one challenges the notion that the Communist regime took property that the Church was using just as it seized facilities being used by other faiths, “Kommersant” pointed out today that the Moscow Patriarchate and its supporters are being somewhat disingenuous in their discussion of this issue (www.kommersant.ru/doc-y.aspx?DocsID=1508176).
That is because prior to 1917, there was a fundamental difference in the status of property used by the Russian Orthodox Church and that used by Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Protestants and others. In Imperial times, the ROC did not own property: it used property owned by the state itself, while the other religions did have ownership of their facilities.
That does not mean that the Russian Orthodox Church should not regain the use of facilities that the Bolsheviks took, but it does mean that the law as currently drafted is problematic. Indeed, as the paper suggests, its provisions are entirely accurate for all the non-Orthodox faiths but not at all for the church intended as its primary beneficiary.
And third, there is a new push among some close to the Patriarchate for expanding Russian Orthodox missionary activity among immigrant workers in the Russian Federation, a group who come primarily from the traditionally Muslim countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
In a comment carried by Interfax today – which may be a trial balloon – Archpriest Dionisii Pozdnyaev of the Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Church in Hong Kong called for the Moscow church to take up the task of “adapting” immigrants who have arrived in Russia (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=37477).
The religious should stop talking about “the problems of immigration” and the “advance of Islam” and start doing something about. Specifically, he said, the Church should promote the Russian language, instruction in Russian Orthodox culture, and a system of social adaptation to Russian realities.
Such a program, the priest said, by showing real love and concern” to the migrants on whom Russia, given its demographic difficulties, must rely, “would draw these people to Christ.”
Even though it is cast as a program promoting acculturation and assimilation, such efforts would not only look like missionary work but would represent the clearest violation yet of the informal compact among the leaders of Russia’s four “traditional” religions not to try to convert members of their faiths.
It is likely that Moscow Patriarchate would insist that immigrants do not fall under the restrictions imposed by that compact and that many of them are not Islamic believers but only “ethnic Muslims.” But that argument would satisfy few Muslims, especially since the Russian Orthodox Church has taken the lead in insisting that all ethnic Russians are truly Orthodox.
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